EX
LJBRIS
REV, J, M. LEACY
HOLY REDEEMER LIBRARY, WjjPDSOR
JOHN M. KELLY LIBRARY
Donated by
The Redemptorists of
the Toronto Province
from the Library Collection of
Holy Redeemer College, Windsor
University of
St. Michael's College, Toronto
THE CROWN OF SORROW
THE
CROWN OF SORROW
QUADRAGESIMA
MEDITATIONS ON THE PASSION OF OUR
LORD, TOGETHER WITH A HARMONT OF
THE PASSION
BY THE
MOST REV. ALBAN GOODIER, SJ.
ARCHBISHOP OF HIERAPOLIS
AUTHOR OP "THE PRINCE OF PEACE," "THE MEANING OF LIFE," ETC
HOLY REDEEMER LIBRABXJPDS0R
LONDON
BURNS GATES & WASHBOURNE LTD
PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
First Published . .1918
Second Impression . 1921
Third Impression . 1927
Fourth Impression . I932
Fifth Impression
JUhil ©bahrt.
FRANCISCUS M. CANONICUS WYNDHAM,
CENSOR DEPUTATUS.
Itnprimaittr.
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
VICARIUS GENERALIS.
WESTMONASTERII,
Dit 16 Maii, 1918.
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
FOR
BURNS GATES AND WASHBOURNE LTD
CONTENTS
PAGf
THE PASSION IN THE WORDS OF THE EVAN
GELISTS : A HARMONY - - ]
1. THE LEAVE-TAKING - - - - 21
II. THE PROTESTS OF LOYALTY - - - 23
III. THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROW - - 25
IV. THE FIRST PRAYER - - 28
V. THE SLEEPING APOSTLES - - -30
VI. THE SECOND PRAYER - - 32
VII. THE SWEAT OF BLOOD - - - 35
VIII. JUDAS AND HIS FOLLOWERS - - "37
IX. THE HOMAGE OF THE ENEMY - - 39
X. THE BETRAYAL - . -42
XI. THE HEALING OF MALCHUS - - - 44
XII. THE PROTEST OF OUR LORD - - -46
XIII. JESUS, ANNAS, CAIAPHAS - -48
XIV. THE TRIAL BEFORE ANNAS - - "51
XV. THE WITNESS BEFORE CAIAPHAS - - 53
XVI. THE CONDEMNATION BEFORE CAIAPHAS - 55
XVII. FIRST DENIAL OF PETER - - 57
XVIII THE FURTHER DENIALS OF PETER - - 60
XIX. THE CONVERSION OF PETER - - -62
XX. THE INSULTS BEFORE CAIAPHAS - - 64
XXI. THE FINAL JEWISH TRIAL - - -67
XXII. THE END OF JUDAS - - - - 69
XXIII. THE FIRST CHARGE BEFORE PILATE - - 71
XXIV. THE SECOND CHARGE BEFORE PILATE - 73
XXV. THE DEFENCE BEFORE PILATE - 76
XXVI. THE SUBJECT OF HEROD - - - 78
XXVII. JESUS BEFORE HEROD . . 80
vii
viii Contents
PACK
XXVIII. THE FIRST SENTENCE OF PILATE - 82
XXIX. JESUS OR BARABBAS ? 85
XXX. THE REJECTION - - - 87
XXXI. THE CONDEMNATION - - - 89
XXXII. THE CROWNING WITH THORNS - Qi
xxxin. " ECCE HOMO" - 94
XXXIV. THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH PILATE - 96
XXXV. THE LAST DEFEAT OF PILATE - 98
XXXVI. SIMON OF CYRENE - - IQI
XXXVII. THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM - - 103
XXXVIII. THE CRUCIFIXION - - IO6
XXXIX. THE TITLE - - ... IO3
XL. THE FIRST WORD; THE GARMENTS - HO
XLI. THE MOCKERY . . j!^
XLII. THE PENITENT THIEF - . II5
XLIII. MARY AND JOHN - - . -117
XLIV. THE FOURTH WORD - I2O
XLV. THE FIFTH AND SIXTH WORDS - - J22
XLVI. THE DEATH OF OUR LORD
I24
XLVII. THE CENTURION'S CONFESSION - - 126
XLVIII THE MOURNERS - - - 129
XL1X. THE PIERCED SIDE - joj
L. THE GIFT OF THE BODY - jjj
LI. THE BURIAL ... j,g
LII. THE GUARDS . . - 138
THE CROWN OF SORROW
THE PASSION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
IN THE WORDS OF THE FOUR
EVANGELISTS.
1. AND when Jesus had said these things,
and they had sung a hymn, He went forth
with His disciples, according to the custom,
over the brook Cedron to the Mount of
Olives, where there was a garden. Then
Jesus saith to them : You will all be scandal
ized in Me this night. For it is written : I
will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the
flock shall be dispersed. But after I shall be
risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.
2. But Peter answering said to Him :
Although all men shall be scandalized in
Thee, I will never be scandalized. And Jesus
saith to him : Amen I say to thee, to-day,
even this night, before the cock crow twice,
thou shalt deny Me thrice. But Peter spoke
the more vehemently and saith to Him :
Although I should die together with Thee, I
will not deny Thee. And in like manner also
said they all.
3. Then Jesus came with them to a country
place, a farm, which is called Gethsemani.
And He said to His disciples : Sit you here,
till I go yonder and pray. Pray, lest ye enter
into temptation. And taking with Him Peter,
and James and John the two sons of Zebedee,
2 The Crown of Sorrow
He began to grow sorrowful and to be sad,
to fear and to be heavy. Then He saith to
them : My soul is sorrowful even unto death,
stay you here and watch with Me.
4. And when He had gone forward a little,
and was withdrawn away from them a stone's
cast, kneeling down He fell flat on the ground
upon His face : and He prayed, saying : Father,
if Thou wilt, remove this chalice from Me,
nevertheless not My will but Thine be done.
O My Father, if it is possible, let this chalice
pass from Me. Nevertheless not as I will, but
as Thou wilt. Abba, Father, all things are
possible to Thee. Take away this chalice
from Me. But not what I will, but what Thou
wilt.
5. And He cometh to His disciples and
findeth them asleep. And He saith to Peter:
Simon, sleepest thou ? What ! Couldst thou,
could you, not watch one hour with Me?
Watch ye: and pray that ye enter not into
temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but
the flesh is weak.
6. And going away again He went the
second time, and prayed, saying the selfsame
words: O My Father, if this chalice cannot
pass except I drink it, Thy will be done. And
He cometh again and findeth them asleep, for
their eyes were heavy with sorrow. And He
said to them : Why sleep you ? Arise, pray,
lest you enter into temptation. And they
knew not what to answer Him.
7. And leaving them He went away again,
and He prayed the third time, saying the same
words. And there appeared to Him an Angel
from Heaven, strengthening Him. And
being in an agony He prayed the longer.
The Passion of Our Lord 3
And His sweat became as drops of blood
trickling down upon the ground. Then He
cometh the third time to His disciples and
saith to them : Sleep ye on now and take your
rest. It is enough; the hour is come. Behold
the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man shall
be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise
up : let us go. Behold he that will betray Me
is at hand.
8. Now Judas also, who betrayed Him, one
of the twelve, knew the place, because Jesus
had often resorted thither together with His
disciples. Judas, therefore, having received a
band of men and servants from the chief
priests and the Pharisees, the scribes and the
ancients of the people, cometh thither while
He was yet speaking, and with him a great
multitude, with lanterns and torches and
weapons, swords and clubs and staves.
9. Jesus, therefore, knowing all things
that were to come upon Him, went forward
and saith to them: Whom seek ye? They
answered Him : Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
saith to them: I am He. And Judas also,
who betrayed Him, stood with them. As
soon, then, as He had said to them, I am He,
they went, backward and fell to the ground.
Again, therefore, He asked them : Whom seek
ye? And they said : Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
answered : I have told you that I am He. If
therefore you seek Me, let these go their
way; that the word might be fulfilled which
He said : Of them whom Thou hast given Me,
I have not lost anyone.
10. And he that betrayed Him had given
them a sign, saying : Whomsoever I shall kiss,
that is He; lay hold on Him, hold Him fast,
4 The Crown of Sorrow
and lead Him away cautiously. And when
he was come, immediately going up to Jesus,
he said : Hail, Rabbi, and he kissed Him.
And Jesus said to him : Friend, whereto art
thou come ? Judas, dost thou betray the Son
of Man with a kiss ? Then they came up, and
laid hands on Jesus, and held Him.
11. And they that were about Him, seeing
what would follow, said to Him : Lord, shall
we strike with the sword? Then one of
them that was with Jesus, Simon Peter,
stretching forth his hand, drew his sword,
and striking the servant of the high priest,
cut off his ear. And the name of the servant
was Malchus. But Jesus, answering, said :
Suffer ye thus far. Then He said to Peter :
Put up again thy sword into the scabbard.
For all that take the sword shall perish with
the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot ask
My Father, and He will give Me presently
more than twelve legions of angels? How,
then, shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that so
it must be done ? The chalice which My
Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?
And when He had touched his ear, He healed
him.
12. In that same hour Jesus said to the chief
priests and magistrates of the Temple, and the
ancients and the multitude that were come
to Him : Are you come out, as it were against
a robber, with swords and clubs and staves
to apprehend Me ? I sat daily with you teach
ing in the Temple, and you did not stretch
forth your hand against Me. But this is your
hour, and the power of darkness. Now all
this was done, that the Scriptures of the
prophets might be fulfilled. Then His dis-
The Passion of Our Lord 5
ciples, leaving Him, all fled away. And a
certain young man followed Him, having a
linen cloth cast about his naked body, and
they laid hold on him. But he, casting off
the linen cloth, fled from them naked.
13. Then the band, and the tribune, and
the servants of the Jews, took Jesus and
bound Him. And they led Him away to
Annas first, for he was father-in-law to
Caiaphas, who was the high priest of that year.
Now Caiaphas was he who had given the
counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that
, one man should die for the people.
14. The high priest then asked Jesus of His
disciples and His doctrine. Jesus answered
him : I have spoken openly to the world, I
have always taught in the synagogue and in
the Temple whither all the Jews resort, and
in private I have spoken nothing. Why
askest thou Me ? Ask them who have heard
what I have spoken to them; behold, they
know what things I have said. And when He
had said these things, one of the officers stand
ing by gave Jesus a blow, saying : Answerest
Thou the high priest so ? Jesus answered
him : If I have spoken ill, give testimony of
the evil; but if well, why strikest thou Me?
And Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas, the
high priest.
15. But they, holding Jesus, led Him to
Caiaphas, the high priest, and all the priests
and the scribes and the ancients were assem
bled together. And the chief priests and the
whole council sought false witness for
evidence against Jesus, that they might put
Him to death. For though many false wit
nesses had come in, and bore false witness
6 The Grown of Sorrow
against Him, their evidence did not agree.
And last of all there came in two false wit
nesses. They, rising up, bore false witness
against Him, saying: We heard Him say, I
will destroy this temple of God made with
hands, and within three days I will build
another not made with hands. And their
witness did not agree.
16. And the high priest, rising up in the
midst, asked Jesus, saying: Answerest Thou
nothing to the things that are laid to Thy
charge by these men? But Jesus held His
peace and answered nothing. Again the high
priest asked Him and said to Him : I adjure
Thee, by the living God, that Thou tell us if
Thou be the Christ, the Son of the blessed
God. And Jesus said to him : Thou hast said
it, I am. Nevertheless I say to you, hereafter
you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of the power of God, and coming
in the clouds of Heaven. Then the high
priest rent his garments, saying: He hath
blasphemed; what further need have we of
witnesses? Behold, now you have heard the
blasphemy, what think you? But they all
answering, condemned Him and said : He is
guilty of death.
17. But Simon Peter followed Jesus afar off,
and so did another disciple, to the high priest's
palace. And that disciple was known to the
high priest, and went in with Jesus into the
court of the high priest. But Peter stood
at the door without. Then the other dis
ciple, who was known to the high priest, went
put and spoke to the portress, and brought
in Peter. And when they had kindled a fire
of coals in the midst of the hall, because it
The Passion of Our Lord 7
was cold, and were sitting about it, Peter sat
with the servants to see the end, and warmed
himself. Now when Peter was in the court
below, there cometh one of the maidservants
of the high priest, the maid that was portress;
and when she had seen Peter sitting in the
light and warming himself, and had looked
on him, she said : Thou also wast with Jesus
of Nazareth, the Gaiilaean. This man also was
with Him. Art not thou also one of this
man's disciples ? But he denied Him before
them all, saying : Woman, I am not. I know
Him not. I neither know nor understand
what thou sayest.
18. And he went forth before the court, out
of the gate, and the cock crew. And again
another maidservant saw him, and she began
to say to the standers-by: This is one of
them. This man also was with Jesus of
Nazareth. Thou also art one of them. And
again he denied with an oath: O man, I am
not. I do not know the man. And after a
little while, about the space of one hour after,
they that stood by came again and said to
Peter : Surely thou also art one of them, for
even thy speech doth discover thee. Thou also
art a Gaiilaean. And another man, one of the
servants of the high priest, a kinsman to him
whose ear Peter cut off, saith to him : Did I
not see thee in the Garden with Him ? Then
he began to curse and to swear that he knew
not the man, saying : Man, I know not what
thou sayest; I know not this man of whom
you speak.
19. And immediately, while he was yet
speaking, the cock crew again. And the
Lord, turning, looked on Peter. And Peter
B The Crown of Sorrow
remembered the word that the Lord Jesus
had said to him : Before the cock crow twice
thou shalt deny Me thrice. And Peter went
out, and began to weep, and wept bitterly.
20. And the men that held Him began to
spit in His face, and mocked Him, and
buffeted Him, and they blindfolded Him, and
covered His face, and smote Him in the face,
and the servants struck Him with the palms
of their hands. And they asked Him, say
ing: Prophesy unto us, O Christ, who is he
that struck Thee ? And many other things,
blaspheming, they said against Him.
21. And as soon as it was day, straightway
all the chief priests and ancients of the people
and scribes came together and held a council
against Jesus to put Him to death. And they
brought Him into their council, saying : If
Thou be the Christ, tell us. And He said to
them : If I shall tell you, you will not believe
Me, and if I shall also ask you, you will not
answer Me nor let Me go. But hereafter the
Son of Man shall be sitting on the right hand
of the power of God. Then said they all :
Art Thou then the Son of God ? And He
said : You say that I am. Then they said :
What need we any further testimony? For
we ourselves have heard it from His own
mouth. And the whole multitude of them
rose up, and led Him away bound, and de
livered Him to Pontius Pilate the Governor.
22. Then Judas, who betrayed Him, seeing
that He was condemned, repenting himself,
brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the
chief priests and the ancients, saying : I have
sinned in betraying innocent blood. But they
said: What is that to us? look thou to it.
The Passion of Our Lord 9
And casting down the pieces of silver in the
Temple, he departed and went and hanged
himself with a halter. But the chief priests,
having taken the pieces of silver, said : It is
unlawful for us to put them into the corbona,
because it is the price of blood. And having
consulted together, they bought with them
the potter's field, to be a burying-place for
strangers. Wherefore that field was called
Haceldama, that is, The field of blood, even
to this day. Then was fulfilled that which
was spoken by Jeremias the Prophet, saying :
And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the
price of Him that was valued, whom they
prized of the children of Israel. And they
gave them unto the potter's field, as the Lord
appointed to me.
23. Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to
the Governor's hall. And it was morning,
and they went not into the hall, that they
might not be defiled, but that they might eat
the Pasch. Pilate therefore went out to meet
them, and said : What accusation bring you
against this man? They answered and said
to him : If He were not a malefactor, we
would not have delivered Him up to thee.
24. Pilate then said to them : Take Him
you, and judge Him according to your law.
The Jews therefore said to him : It is not law
ful for us to put anyone to death; that the
word of Jesus might be fulfilled, signifying
what death He should die. And they began
to accuse Him, saying : We have found this
man perverting our nation, and forbidding to
give tribute to Caesar, and saying that He is
Christ the King. And Jesus stood before
Pilate the Governor. And Pilate asked Him,
io The Grown of Sorrow
saying: Art Thou the King of the Jews?
And Jesus answered him and said : Thou
sayest it. And the chief priests and ancients
accused Him in many things. And when He
was accused He answered nothing.
25. Then Pilate again asked Him: An-
swerest Thou nothing ? Behold in how many
things they accuse Thee. Dost not Thou
hear how great testimonies they allege
against Thee ? But Jesus still answered him
not to any word, so that the Governor won
dered exceedingly. Pilate therefore went
into the hall again, and called Jesus, and said
to Him : Art Thou the King of the Jews ?
Jesus answered : Sayest thou this thing of
thyself, or have others told it thee of Me ?
Pilate answered : Am I a Jew ? Thy nation
and the chief priests have delivered Thee up
to me. What hast Thou done? Jesus an
swered : My Kingdom is not of this world.
If My Kingdom were of this world, My
servants would certainly strive that I should
not be delivered to the Jews, but now My
Kingdom is not from hence. Pilate therefore
said to Him : Art Thou a King then ? Jesus
answered: Thou sayest that I am a King.
For this was I born, and for this came I into
the world, that I should give testimony to
the truth. Everyone that is of the truth
heareth My voice. Pilate saith to Him:
What is truth? And when he had said this
he went forth again to the Jews, and saith
to them : I find no cause in Him.
26. But they were more earnest, saying:
He stirreth up the people, teaching through
out all Judaea, beginning from Galilee to this
place. And Pilate hearing of Galilee, asked
The Passion of Our Lord 1 1
if the man were a Galilsean. And when he
understood that He belonged to Herod's
jurisdiction, he sent Him away to Herod, who
himself was also at Jerusalem in those days.
27. And Herod, seeing Jesus, was very glad,
for he was desirous of a long time to see Him,
because he had heard many things of Him,
and he hoped to see some miracle wrought
by Him. And he questioned Him with many
words. But He answered him nothing. And
the chief priests and scribes stood by, ear
nestly accusing Him. And Herod with his
soldiers despised Him, and mocked Him, put
ting on Him a white garment, and sent Him
back to Pilate. And Herod and Pilate were
made friends together that same day: for
before they were enemies one to another.
28. Then Pilate, calling together the chief
priests and the magistrates and the people,
said to them : You have brought this man to
me as one that perverteth the people; and,
behold, I, having examined Him before you,
find no cause in this man touching those
things wherein you accuse Him. No, nor yet
Herod, for I sent you to him, and behold,
nothing worthy of death is done to Him. I
will chastise Him, therefore, and release Him.
29. Now upon the solemn festival-day the
Governor was accustomed to release to the
people one of the prisoners, whomsoever they
demanded. And he had then a notorious
prisoner that was called Barabbas, a robber
who was put in prison with seditious men,
who in the sedition had committed murder.
And when the multitude was come up, they
began to desire what he always had done to
them. And Pilate answered them and said:
12 The Crown of Sorrow
You have a custom that I should release one
unto you at the Pasch. Will you, therefore,
that I release unto you the King of the Jews ?
Whom will you that I release to you, Barabbas,
or Jesus who is called Christ ? For he knew
that through envy the chief priests had
delivered Him up.
30. But the chief priests and ancients per
suaded the people that they should ask
Barabbas and make Jesus away. And the
Governor answering said to them : Which
will you have of the two to be released unto
you? But the whole multitude cried out at
once, saying : Away with this man, and re
lease unto us Barabbas. And Pilate spoke to
them again, desiring to release Jesus : What
will you then that I do with Jesus, that is
called Christ, the King of the Jews? But
they all again cried out : Crucify Him, crucify
Him, let Him be crucified ! And Pilate said
to them the third time : Why, what evil hath
He done? I find no cause of death in Him.
I will chastise Him, therefore, and let Him
go. But they were the more instant with loud
voices : Crucify Him, let Him be crucified !
And their voices prevailed.
31. And Pilate, seeing that he prevailed
nothing, but rather that a tumult was made,
having taken water, washed his hands be
fore the people, saying : I am innocent of
the blood of this just man; look you to it.
And all the people answering said: His
blood be upon us and upon our children.
Then Pilate, being willing to satisfy the
people, gave sentence that their petition should
be granted. And he released unto them
Barabbas, who for murder and sedition had
The Passion of Our Lord 13
been cast into prison, whom they had desired,
but delivered up to them Jesus, when he had
scourged Him, to be crucified according to
their will.
32. Then the soldiers of the Governor, tak
ing Jesus into the court of the palace, gathered
together unto Him the whole band, and
stripping Him, they put a scarlet cloak about
Him. And platting a crown of thorns, they
put it upon His head, and a reed in His right
hand. And they came to Him, and bowing
the knee before Him, they mocked Him, and
began to salute Him, saying : Hail, King of
the Jews! And they gave Him blows, and
they did spit upon Him, and they took the reed
and struck His head, and bowing their knees,
they worshipped Him.
33. Pilate therefore went forth again and
saith to them : Behold I bring Him forth to
you, that you may know that I find no cause
in Him. (So Jesus came forth, bearing the
crown of thorns, and the purple garment.)
And he saith to them: Behold the man!
When the chief priests, therefore, and the
officers had seen Him, they cried out, saying :
Crucify Him, crucify Him ! Pilate saith to
them : Take Him you, and crucify Him, for I
find no cause in Him. The Jews answered
him : We have a law, and according to that
law He ought to die, because He made Him
self the Son of God.
34. When Pilate therefore had heard this
saying he feared the more. And he entered
into the hall again, and he said to Jesus :
Whence art Thou? But Jesus gave him no
answer. Pilate therefore saith to Him :
Speakest Thou not to me ? Knowest Thou
14 The Crown of Sorrow
not that I have power to crucify Thee, and
I have power to release Thee? Jesus an
swered: Thou shouldst not have any power
against Me, unless it were given thee from
above. Therefore he that hath delivered Me
to thee hath the greater sin.
35. And from thenceforth Pilate sought to
release Him. But the Jews cried out, saying :
If thou release this man thou art not Caesar's
friend, for whosoever maketh himself a king
speaketh against Caesar. Now when Pilate
had heard these words, he brought Jesus forth,
and sat down in the judgment-seat, in the
place that is called Lithostrotos, and in He
brew Gabbatha. And it was the Parasceve of
the Pasch, about the sixth hour, and he saith
to the Jews: Behold your King! But they
cried out: Away with Him, away with Him,
crucify Him ! Pilate saith to them : Shall I
crucify your King? The chief priests an
swered : We have no king but Caesar. Then,
therefore, he delivered Him to them to be
crucified.
36. And after they had mocked Him, they
took off the purple cloak from Him, and put
on Him His own garments, and led Him away
to crucify Him. And as they led Him away,
they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon,
who passed by coming out of the country, the
father of Alexander and of Rufus ; him they
forced to take up His cross to carry after
Jesus.
37. And there followed Him a great multi
tude of people and of women, who bewailed
and lamented Him. But Jesus, turning to
them, said : Daughters of Jerusalem, weep
not over Me, but weep for yourselves and for
The Passion of Our Lord 15
your children. For, behold, the day shall
come wherein they will say : Blessed are the
barren and the wombs that have not borne,
and the breasts that have not given suck.
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains :
Fall upon us, and to the hills : Cover us. For
if in the green wood they do these things,
what shall be done in the dry ?
38. And bearing His own cross, He went
forth to that place which is called Calvary,
but in Hebrew Golgotha. And they gave
Him to drink wine mingled with myrrh.
And when He had tasted He would not drink.
And there were also two other, malefactors, led
with Him to be put to death. And when they
were come to the place they crucified Him
there; and the robbers, one on the right hand,
and the other on the left. And the Scripture
was fulfilled, which saith: And with the
wicked He was reputed.
39. And Pilate wrote a title also, and he put
it upon the cross over His head. And the
writing was : This is Jesus of Nazareth, the
King of the Jews. This title, therefore, many
of the Jews read, because the place where
Jesus was crucified was near to the city, and it
was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin.
Then the chief priests said to Pilate : Write
not, the King of the Jews, but that He said :
I am the King of the Jews. Pilate answered :
What I have written I have written.
40. And Jesus said : Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do. Then the
soldiers, after they had crucified Him, took
his garments (and they made four parts, to
every soldier a part, casting lots upon them
what every man should take), and also His
1 6 The Grown of Sorrow
coat Now the coat was without seam, woven
from the top throughout. They said then
to one another : Let us not cut it, but let us
cast lots for it whose it shall be; that the
word might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the Prophet : They have parted My garments
among them, and upon My vesture they have
cast lots. And the soldiers indeed did these
things. And it was the third hour and they
crucified Him.
41. And they sat down and watched Him.
And the people stood beholding. And they
that passed by blasphemed Him, wagging
their heads and saying : Vah, Thou that
destroyest the Temple of God, and in three
days buildest it up again, save Thy own self;
if Thou be the Son of God, come down from
the cross. In like manner the chief priests
with the scribes and ancients, mocking, de
rided Him, saying : He saved others, Himself
He cannot save. If He be Christ the King of
Israel, if He be Christ the Son of God, let
Him now come down from the cross, that we
may see and believe. He trusted in God ; let
Him now deliver Him, if He will have Him,
for He said : I am the Son of God.
42. And the soldiers also mocked Him,
coming to Him and offering Him vinegar, and
saying: If Thou be the King of the Jews,
save Thyself. And the selfsame thing the
thieves that were crucified with Him re
proached Him with, and reviled Him. And
one of these robbers who were hanging,
blasphemed Him, saying: If thou be Christ,
save Thyself and us. But the other, answer
ing, rebuked him, saying : Neither dost thou
fear God, seeing thou art under the same con-
The Passion of Our Lord 17
demnation? And we, indeed, justly, for we
receive the due reward of our deeds; but this
man hath done no evil. And he said to Jesus :
Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come
into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him :
Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt be
with Me in Paradise.
43. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus
His Mother, and His Mother's sister, Mary of
Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus
therefore saw His Mother, and the disciple
standing whom He loved, He saith to His
Mother: Woman, behold thy son. After
that He saith to the disciple : Behold thy
Mother. And from that hour the disciple
took her to his own.
44. And when the sixth hour was come,
there was darkness over the whole earth until
the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour
Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying:
Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani ? which is,
being interpreted : My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me ? And some of them
that stood there and heard, said : Behold, this
man calleth for Elias.
45. Afterwards Jesus, knowing that all
things were accomplished, that the Scripture
might be fulfilled, said : I thirst. Now there
was a vessel set there full of vinegar. And
immediately one of them running took a
sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it
on a reed about hyssop, and offered it to His
mouth, and gave Him to drink. And others
said : Stay, let us see whether Elias will come
to take Him down and deliver Him. When
Jesus therefore had taken the vinegar, He
said : It is consummated.
i8 The Crown of Sorrow
46. And Jesus again crying with a loud
voice, said : Father, into Thy hands I com
mend My Spirit. And saying this, bowing down
His head, He gave up the ghost. And behold
the sun was darkened, and the veil of the
Temple was rent in two in the midst from
the top even to the bottom, and the earth
quaked, and the rocks were rent. And the
graves opened, and many bodies of the Saints
that had slept arose, and coming out of the
tombs after His resurrection, came into the
holy city and appeared to many.
47. Now the centurion, who stood over
against Him, and they that were with him
watching Jesus, seeing that crying out in this
manner He had given up the ghost; having
seen the earthquake and the things that were
done, were greatly afraid, and glorified God,
saying : Indeed this was a just man. Indeed
this man was the Son of God.
48. And all the multitude of them that were
come together to that sight, and saw the
things that were done, returned striking their
breasts. And there were also women, among
whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the
mother of James the Less, and of Joseph, and
Salome, and the mother of the sons of Ze-
bedee, who also when He was in Galilee
followed Him, and ministered to Him, and
many other women that came up with Him
to Jerusalem. And all His acquaintance and
the women stood afar off beholding these
things.
49. Then the Jews (because it was the
Parasceve), that the bodies might not remain
upon the cross on the Sabbath day (for that
was a great Sabbath day), besought Pilate
The Passion of Our Lord 19
that their legs might be broken, and that they
might be taken away. The soldiers therefore
came, and they broke the legs of the first,
and of the other that was crucified with Him.
But when they came to Jesus, and saw that
He was already dead, they did not break His
legs, but one of the soldiers opened His side
with a spear, and immediately there came out
blood and water. And he that saw gave testi
mony, and his testimony is true. And he
knoweth that he saith true, that you also may
believe. For these things were done that the
Scripture might be fulfilled: You shall not
break a bone of Him. And again another
Scripture saith: They shall look on Him
whom they pierced.
50. And when evening was come (because
it was the Parasceve, that is, the day before
the Sabbath), a certain rich man of Arimathea,
a city of Judaea, by name Joseph, who was a
senator, a noble councillor, a good and just
man, who also himself waited for the King
dom of God, and was a disciple of Jesus, but
in private for fear of the Jews ; this man had
not consented to their counsel and doings;
went in boldly to Pilate and besought that he
might take away the body of Jesus. But
Pilate wondered that He should be already
dead. And when he had understood it by the
centurion, he commanded that the body of
Jesus should be delivered to Joseph. He
came therefore and took away the body of
Jesus.
51. And Nicodemus also came, who at first
came to Jesus by night, bringing a mixture of
myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound.
They took therefore the body of Jesus, and
20 The Crown of Sorrow
buying fine linen, wrapped it up in the linen
cloths with the spices, as it is the custom with
the Jews to bury. And there was in the place
where He was crucified a garden, and in the
garden a new sepulchre, his own (Joseph's)
monument, which he had hewed out in a rock,
wherein never yet any man had been laid.
There, therefore, by reason of the Parasceve of
the Jews, they laid Jesus, because the sepulchre
was nigh at hand. "And he rolled a great stone
to the door of the monument, and went his
way. And Mary Magdalen, and Mary the
mother of Joseph, and the women that were
come with Him from Galilee, following after,
sitting over against the sepulchre, beheld
where His body was laid. And returning
they prepared spices and ointments, and on
the Sabbath day they rested, according to the
commandment.
52. And the next day which followed the
day of the preparation, the chief priests and
the Pharisees came together to Pilate, saying :
Sir, we have remembered that that seducer
said, while He was yet alive : After three days
I will rise again. Command, therefore, the
sepulchre to be guarded until the third day,
lest His disciples come, and steal Him away,
and say to the people : He is risen from the
dead, so the last error shall be worse than the
first. Pilate said to them : You have a guard;
go, guard it as you know. And they, depart
ing, made the sepulchre sure with guards,
sealing the stone.
The Leave-Taking 21
I. — THE LEAVE-TAKING.
" And when Jesus had said these things, and they had
sung a hymn, He went forth with His disciples, accord
ing to His custom, over the brook Cedron to the Mount
of Olives, where there was a garden. Then Jesus saith
to them, You will all be scandalized in Me this night.
For it is written : I will strike the shepherd, and the
sheep of the flock shall be dispersed. But after I shall
be risen again, I will go before you into Galilee." —
MATT. xxvi. 30-32; MARK xiv. 26-28; LUKE xxii. 39;
JOHN xviii. i.
1. Our Lord knew that this was to be the
last gathering. At the beginning of the Last
Supper He had said : " With desire I have
desired (i.e., I have desired with great long
ing) to eat this Pasch with you before I
suffer." All through that Supper how keen
was His affection for His own; how much He
felt for them; how all His words and actions
had been directed with a view to giving them
comfort and courage! He had bid farewell
to His Mother; of that scene, as of all other
similar scenes, Scripture tells us not a word,
as though the Evangelists felt it to be too
sacred for description. But it is not too sacred
for meditation, and we may look on and say
and think what we will. He bade farewell to
Judas in unmistakable terms; but with how
much affection it had been preceded, how
much affection was shown even at the parting
itself! And He bade farewell to all the rest;
we can take them one by one, with their
different characters and different shortcom
ings, and know that He had a special love for
each.
2. Then He led them out for the last walk
22 The Grown of Sorrow
together in the evening twilight. They were
full of courage, for had they not been fed with
His own Body and His own Blood? Full
of hope, for had He not told them that
He had overcome the world ? Full of
thankfulness, for had He not prayed speci
ally for them and associated them with
Himself before His Father? "Heavenly
Father," He had said, " I pray that where I am,
these may also be." But, lastly, full of con
fidence in themselves; they had not yet learned
that "Without Me you can do nothing."
This Our Lord knew, though they did not;
and it is the one piercing agony of the leave-
taking. He must tell them. In spite of all
their joy of heart, and protestations, He says
to them : " You will all be scandalized in Me
this night : For it is written, I will strike the
Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be
dispersed."
3. There is something very tender in the
manner of this solemn warning. He scarcely
seems to blame them; He speaks as if it were
a sad necessity, and quotes a prophecy to
confirm it. But He does not quote all the
prophecy; He quotes only that which refers
to them; what refers to Himself He keeps in
His own mind. For what said the Prophet?
These are his words : " And they shall say to
Him : What are these wounds in the midst of
Thy hands ? And He shall say : With these
T was wounded in the house of them that
loved Me. Awake, O sword, against My
shepherd, and against the man that cleaveth
to Me, saith the Lord of hosts : strike the
Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered, and
I will turn My hand to the little ones." But
The Protests of Loyalty 23
after that the Prophet promises a refining of
the people; and Our Lord will do no less. He
says nothing of punishment; He will not re
taliate ; He looks beyond to the reconciliation :
"But after I shall be risen again, I will go
before you into Galilee."
Summary.
1. Our Lord held this formal leave-taking, with all
together, and with each individually, the best and the
worst.
2. They were full of consolations, but also of self-con
fidence, which needed to be checked.
3. Yet this warning was one of sympathy, and even
as He gave it, He still looked to the reunion.
II. — THE PROTESTS OF LOYALTY.
" But Peter answering said to him : Although all
men shall be scandalized in Thee, I will never be scan
dalized. And Jesus saith to him : Amen I say to thee,
to-day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice,
thou shalt deny Me thrice. But Peter spoke the more
vehemently, and saith to Him : Although I should die
together with thee, I will not deny Thee. And in like
manner also said they all." — MATT. xxvi. 33-35; MARK
xiv. 29-31.
i. It is natural that Peter should take alarm
at this warning of our Lord. Whatever
other follies and mistakes he had made in his
life, however much he had hitherto been re
buked, he had never been unfaithful. On the
contrary, he was Peter, and no longer Simon,
precisely because he had been the first to pro
claim : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God." On another occasion, when so
many turned away "and walked with Him no
more"; when the broken-hearted Christ turned
to His disciples and asked them: "Will you
also leave Me ?" he had spoken for them all :
24 The Grown of Sorrow
" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the
words of eternal life." Again, on the Sea of
Galilee he had walked upon the waters to his
Master; and on Mount Thabor he had said in
his enthusiasm : " Lord, it is good for us to
be here." Never yet had he failed one tittle in
his allegiance; surely, then, he would be con
fident now. He would be; no matter what
might happen to the rest : " Although all men
shall be scandalized in Thee, I will never be
scandalized."
2. What do Our Lord and St. Peter mean
by this being " scandalized " ? We have it best
expressed by the two disciples on the way to
Emmaus. "We hoped," they said together,
" that it was He that should have redeemed
Israel." We hoped! and they were dis
appointed. We hoped in this "Prophet,
mighty in word and work before God and all
the people." They had seen all He had done,
they had heard all He had said. They had
trusted in Him as the Saviour of the world,
as the King of Israel. And yet that was to
happen this night and next day which was to
shake their confidence. Before midnight they
were to think less well of Him whom they
had chosen for their Ideal and their Master.
They were to be disillusioned and to doubt;
this was to be scandalized in Him. And the
same has been ever since. Jesus Christ is a
disappointment to many; He is too lowly
for their liking; He will not act when
they think He ought. They forget His warn
ing: "Blessed is he that shall not be scan
dalized in Me."
3. It cannot be doubted that these men loved
Our Lord. It cannot be doubted that when
The Protests of Loyalty 25
they protested they meant every word they
said. Perhaps it was on this account that Our
Lord seemed already to have forgiven them;
the seriousness of the offence seems scarcely
to be noticed. Still, their love was not enough
to save them from disaster. Their spirit may
indeed have been willing, but their nature was
weak; and there are times when spirit and
nature must be strong together if one is to
conquer. Natural virtue may usually be equal
to natural trial; but man is more than merely
natural, and he is submitted to more than
merely natural forces. When that time comes,
there must be in him something supernatural
that he may come through safe; and this is
the meaning of the spiritual life, the signifi
cance of prayer as a safeguard in temptation.
Summary.
1. The protest of Peter seemed naturally justified.
He had not yet learned himself.
2. To be " scandalized " is to be disappointed, dis
illusioned, grow mistrustful.
3. And they were scandalized, not because they did
not love, because they had not the spiritual sight that
was needed.
III. — THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROW
" Then Jesus came with them to a country place, a
farm, which is called Gethsemani. And He said to His
disciples : Sit you here, till I go yonder and pray. Pray,
lest ye enter into temptation. And taking with Him
Peter, and James and John the two sons of Zebedee, He
began to grow sorrowful and to be sad, to fear and to
be heavy. Then He saith to them : My soul is sorrowful
even unto death ; stay you here and watch with me. " —
MATT. xxvi. 36-38; MARK xiv. 32-34; LUKE xxii. 40.
I. Three distinct stages are noticeable as
Our Lord climbs the hill of Olivet. First,
26 The Grown of Sorrow
at the foot of the hill He leaves the main body
of the Apostles. Judas is already absent;
three He takes further with Him; the eight
He bids sit and wait, as He had probably bade
them often enough before, while He goes
as usual for His evening meditation in the
Garden. But this night He adds a word of
warning. While they sit and wait they must
" pray, lest they enter into temptation." The
Blessed Sacrament will not of itself save
them; their own protestations will not save
them; in a very short time the mob will be on
them and they will run away. They have had
their warning; let them take heed. There is
nothing strange in this. How often has it
happened to all of us that we have foreseen
a crisis of great danger, and the very fore
sight of it has prompted us to prepare for it
by prayer. Sometimes we have listened to
the prompting, and have come through safely;
sometimes we have not, and have been " scan
dalized"
2. Then He climbs the hill with the
three chosen companions, the companions
on Thabor, the companions in the government
of the Church that was to be; if companions
in glory, companions also in sorrow, which
has always been the lot of the faithful rulers
of God's people. In their presence He lets
Himself break down; this is the first step in
their temptation, and He knows they will not
falter, though for some of the others it might
have been too much. St. Matthew and
St. Mark use four words to describe this first
collapse: sorrow, sadness, fear, heaviness.
Perhaps we may paraphrase them thus : sense
of utter failure, sense of black depression,
The Beginnings of Sorrows 27
sense of physical unnerving, sense of gloom
and foreboding — those four agonies which
beset every broken soul. And these were not
only in His heart, but this time appeared to
the three in His eyes, in His face, in His whole
behaviour.
3. Sometimes, in the company of a true
friend, there is sanctity in revealing one's
heart. For friendship means equality, and
equality demands that we should share all that
we have, the sorrows with the joys. "Come
to Me all you that labour and are burthened,
and I will refresh you," He had said on one
occasion; it was now His turn to be burthened
and to need refreshment. His manner com
pels Him to speak, for their sake as much as
for His own; He must explain His strange
behaviour. He is beaten, He can scarcely
support Himself, He never needed a com
panion more than now. He knows that His
only support can be in prayer, yet He feels
that even for this He must have the com
panionship of others. "My soul is sorrowful
even unto death : it would gladly die ; to live
as it is now is worse than to die, it is living
death. Stay you here : do not leave Me " —
as a dying man begs not to be left alone —
" and watch with Me : just be present with
Me."
Summary.
1. First the eight are left, warned of danger, and
warned to prepare for it.
2. Then the chosen three are permitted to witness His
first agony.
3. To whom He confesses His depression and His
need of a companion.
28 The Grown of Sorrow
IV. — THE FIRST PRAYER.
" And when He had gone forward a little, and was
withdrawn away from them a stone's cast, kneeling
down, He fell flat on the ground upon His face ; and H«
prayed, saying : Father, if Thou wilt, remove this
chalice from Me, nevertheless not My will but Thine be
done. O My Father, if it is possible, let this chalice
pass from Me. Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou
wilt. Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee.
Take away this chalice from Me. But not what I will,
but what Thou wilt." — MATT. xxvi. 36-39; MARK xiv.
32-36 ; LUKE xxii. 40-42.
1. Here the first phase of the Passion
begins. Before any man has yet touched
Him, before any wound has been inflicted on
Him, we find Our Lord more broken by suffer
ing than we shall again see Him during the
whole course of the Passion. Here He appears
as a broken man; we shall not see that again;
on the contrary, as we shall have reason again
and again to recall, His very independence and
unbrokenness is perhaps the chief feature of
the rest of the story. But here He is bowed
down : He falls, first to His knees, then flat on
His face upon the ground. Such scenes, of
men broken by whatever sorrow, are always
terrible; this surpasses them all. Let it be
remembered that in this, and throughout the
whole Passion, there is no pretending. Our
Lord suffered that which brought His hu
manity to such a pass. We wonder what it
could have been; St. Paul gives the key:
"Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me."
2. But can we go no deeper ? Can we with
any certainty analyze the ingredients of the
chalice which He so abhorred ? It could not
have been merely a fear of the coming Pas-
The First Prayer 29
sion ; it is impossible to believe that Our
Lord would pray so vehemently against that
which, on other occasions, He had even said
He desired. But if we have ever felt remorse
at some shameful thing we have done, if we
have ever shared the shame of another by
receiving some of the blame or the stain of
his misdeeds — a relation, a friend, a disciple,
with whom we have been connected, or for
whom we have been responsible — then we may
understand a little, a very little, of the shame
of Him who had made Himself man, who had
shared all with man, who in consequence took
upon Himself the burthen of man's evil, who
felt it equally with man — nay, more than man,
since He alone could comprehend the mean
ing of sin, who, as it were, that night felt
Himself guilty, not of one sin, nor of one
man's sins, but of all the sins of all the world.
The sense of guilt has driven men to madness,
to suicide; it is the ingredient of Hell, in this
world and in the next. Then, what must that
agony have been of Him who for man was,
as St. Paul tells us, "made sin"!
3. This, then, was the agony He would have
removed "if it were possible." He appeals
with a kind of protest. "Father! — O My
Father! — Abba, Father!" — He cries out, as
if the claim of Sonship should be enough.
Had it not been enough for the Prodigal Son
in the parable, and was He not, even if He had
taken upon Himself all the sins of all men,
still the very Son of His Father ? But there
was something else to be considered. The
Father loved His Son dearly; but He also
loved mankind. The Son loved the Father
dearly; but He, too, dearly loved mankind.
30 The Crown of Sorrow
And on this account that the chalice should be
removed was not possible; for then love
would never have been satisfied.
Summary.
1. Our Lord is here more bent beneath His burthen
than in any other scene of the Passion.
2. The content of that burthen was mainly all the
sins of all mankind.
3. The prayer was genuine; but love made it that it
could not be heard.
V. — THE SLEEPING APOSTLES.
" And He cometh to His disciples and findeth them
asleep. And He saith to Peter : Simon, sleepest thou?
What ! Couldst thou, could you, not watch one hour
with Me? Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into
temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh
is weak." — MATT. xxvi. 40, 41 ; MARK xiv. 37, 38.
i. The affection and the tender feeling seen
in Our Lord's coming back to His disciples
in the midst of His agony is a touch of human
nature that is surely not surpassed in the
whole Bible. " I looked for one that would
weep together with Me, and there was none ;
for one that would comfort Me, and I found
none." He went, not so much for their sakes
as for His own. It was a perfect act of friend
ship. He was sharing the burthen of man.
He looked for man to share His burthen in
return, if only by compassion. Who, then,
shall say after this that to seek relief in distress
from those from whom true friendship gives
us the right to seek it is a weakness ? Or if
it is a weakness, then it is one not incon
sistent with the perfect imitation of Our
Lord. "A brother helped by a brother is
The Sleeping Apostles 31
like a strong city " ; and of the two, there is
rather too little mutual support in this world
than too much. Let us not, then, too easily
condemn it; for "as often as you do it to the
least, you do it to Me."
2. But though to seek comfort when in need
and to find it is a perfect thing, to seek it and
not to find it may be the occasion of still
greater perfection. And this was the lot of
Our Lord on this terrible night. " He came
unto His own, and His own received Him not,"
is St. John's summary of Our Lord's life;
when he wrote those words, had he in his mind
that night when he himself slept at the gate
of the Garden ? His own had no comfort
for Him. But He was not angered ; He was
only disappointed — only disappointed ! as He
had been many a time before, as He has been
many a time since. And His disappointment
did not harden Him against them ; it only made
Him feel for them the more. He did not
think of His own loss; He thought only of
what they were losing. So it is with true
friendship; if we are truly another's friend,
and he hurts us, we are sorry more for him
than for ourselves.
3. This is the first suffering of the Passion,
the neglect of His own, and we may well ask
ourselves whether it has not been put first
with a special object. In His lifetime the
neglect of men was the only thing of which
He complained; since His leaving this world
we may safely say that nothing else has given
Him more to endure. For those who know
no better there is excuse enough; for His
enemies there is separate treatment; but for
His own, for those who have accepted His
32 The Crown of Sorrow
livery in Baptism, who have been fed upon
His Body and Blood, who have been sanctified
at every fresh turning of their lives by the
sacraments, who look for His welcome at the
hour of death, who appreciate all or much of
the wonderful things He has done for them
during life — for how many of these does Our
Lord's rebuke hold good : " Sleepest thou ?"
Do you not care ? " Could you not watch one
hour?" Is My company, even for an hour at
a time, too much ? " Watch and pray, that
ye enter not into temptation." If you will not
help yourselves, I cannot help you. "The
spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." With
out Me you can do nothing; with Me there
is nothing you cannot do.
Summary.
1. Our Lord was a true friend, in weakness as well
as in strength.
2. " He came unto His own, and His own received
Him not."
3. And the same is still too true to-day.
VI. — THE SECOND PRAYER.
" And going away again, He went the second time,
and prayed, saying the selfsame words : O My Father,
if this chalice cannot pass except I drink it, Thy will
be done. And He cometh again and findeth them
asleep ; for their eyes were heavy with sorrow. And
He said to them : Why sleep you ? Arise, pray, lest you
enter into temptation. And they knew not what to
answer Him." — MATT. xxvi. 42, 43; MARK xiv. 39, 40;
LUKE xxii. 45, 46.
I. Undoubtedly the first ingredient of Our
Lord's cup of sorrow was the sense of the
sin of the world, the sense that in some way
The Second Prayer 33
it was His own, the sense that in Him it was
to be expiated. But this was intensified by
many others. There was the intensity of His
love. The more we care for others, the more
we suffer for them and with them : what, then,
must have been the measure of the suffering
of Our Lord for us ? Again, there was the
determination that He would not be out-done
in generosity; safely, then, we may say that
the greatest sufferer in the world does but
approach to the suffering of Our Lord.
Again, there was the fact of His refined and
perfect nature. The more perfect the creature,
the more keenly does it feel; what, then, was
the suffering of the nature of Our Lord ?
2. In these and countless other ways may
we grow in the understanding of the Agony
in the Garden, considering only the perfec
tion of His human nature. There is yet
another, of which we human beings can only
catch a glimpse ; it is contained in that word
"Abba, 'Father." For if He could be so
broken at the thought of man, because He
loved man, because He was Himself Man,
because man had done so ill, what must have
been His agony, His amazement, on the side
of God, when He thought of God His Father,
whom man had defied; when He thought of
Himself, God the Son, whom man had so
ignored, and was soon to do to death; when
He felt His love for the Father so insulted
well up within Him, and the love of the Father
encompass Him all about? We human be
ings can only guess at the meaning of all this.
We trv to express it by the term "the wrath
of God," and speak of it as being visited on
Our Lord. But we mean almost the opposite ;
3
34 The Crown of Sorrow
we mean the love of God unrequited, insulted,
the love of God devouring Our Lord, so to
speak, in its effort to win back the love
of man. Whatever language we use must
always seem extravagant, for we are dealing
with a love, and therefore a suffering, which
human words can never express.
3. Lastly, there was His own part in this
drama. It was an increase of agony to Him
self that His Sacred Humanity should meet
with so much ingratitude, and neglect, and
forgetfulness. It was an increase of agony
to know that for so many His sufferings
were to bear so little fruit; that while He
was to be for the resurrection of many,
there were also many for whom He was
to be the fall. It was an increase of agony
to know that in His mystical Body, the
Church, the Passion was to be continued; that
not only " this night," but through all time,
man would be scandalized in Him through
her, men would take offence because of her
seeming weakness. It was an increase of
agony to foresee the treatment He would re
ceive in His Sacramental Life, the insults
through all time.
Summary.
1. We must measure Our Lord's agony by the per
fection of His Human nature.
2. We must measure it by the perfection of His love
for His Father.
3. We must measure it by the personal sufferings He
could not forget in Himself.
The Sweat of Blood 35
VII. — THE SWEAT OF BLOOD.
" And leaving them, He went away again, and He
prayed the third time, saying the same words. And
there appeared to Him an Angel from Heaven, strength
ening Him. And being in an agony, He prayed the
longer. And His sweat became as drops of blood trick
ling down upon the ground. Then He cometh the third
time to His disciples and saith to them : Sleep ye on
now and take your rest. It is enough, the hour is come.
Behold the hour is at hand, and the Sen of Man shall
be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us
go; behold he that will betray Me is at hand." — MATT.
xxvi. 44-46; MARK xiv. 41, 42; LUKE xxii. 45, 46.
1. There is something very becoming in
this picture of consolation which is told us by
St. Luke. In the trial of the Angels.J)efore
the beginning of man, many had been faithful;
they had bowed before the Man-God that was
to be. When the time was full, an Angel
announced His coming; when He came, and
man took no notice of Him, the skies were
thronged with angels singing His glory.
When He lay in the desert, exhausted in body,
tempted by the devil, "Behold Angels came
and ministered unto Him." We do not
wonder, then, that this third time, when again
He is deserted by man, and tempted by Satan,
an Angel is visible at His sideband gives Him
the succour that as Man He needs.
2. Thus is Our Lord's prayer heard. But,
let us noticej. the answer to the prayer is very
different from the words of the petition. He
asked that the chalice might^be removed; in
stead, it is made yet more bitter, by the con
tinued neglect of His chosen three, by the
coming ever nearer of the traitor and his band,
36 The Grown of Sorrow
by His own growing weakness and inability
to resist. But there comes along with all this,
not mere comfort, but increase of strength;
not relief from His burthen, but the power to
endure yet more ; not an end to the agony,
but the courage to "pray the longer"; not
rest at last upon the soft grass, but " resistance
even unto blood," so that " His sweat became
as drops of blood trickling on the ground."
Is there anything more sublime, and yet more
human, than that blood-bathed Body? So
does God hear prayer; so much farther does
God see than we. When we ask for rest, for
consolation, He prefers to make us heroes ;
and when it is over, and we look back, we
thank Him that "not our will, but His has
been done." There is no exception to this
rule.
3. What a transformation takes place after
this third prayer ! To the end of the Passion,
no matter what men may do to Him, we shall
never see Him falter or broken any more.
Always henceforth He is Master. He has
strength for Himself, except such as may de
pend upon His poor worn body; and He has
strength for everyone about Him. His dis
ciples may sleep if they will ; He will protect
them ; in the hour of danger He will call them.
The hour does come; He does call them; He
gives them fair warning; He recommends
them to go; there is strength in every word
and gesture. We look on amazed ; we wonder
whether we have understood aright; and yet
around us we see the same illustrated in those
who seek their own support in prayer.
Judas and his Followers 37
Summary.
1. The coming of the Angel is of a piece with the rest
of the life of Our Lord.
2. His prayer is heard, not in the letter, but with an
increase of strength.
3. And that strength is abiding, not for Himself only,
but also for others.
VIII. — JUDAS AND HIS FOLLOWERS.
" Now Judas also, who betrayed Him, one of the
twelve, knew the place, because Jesus had often resorted
thither together with His disciples. Judas therefore,
having received a band of men and servants from the
chief priests and the Pharisees, the scribes and the
ancients of the people, cometh thither while He was yet
speaking, and with him a great multitude, with lanterns
and torches and weapons, swords and clubs and staves."
— MATT. xxvi. 47; MARK xiv. 43; LUKE xxii. 47; JOHN
xviii. 2, 3.
I. It is almost terrible to notice how the
Evangelists linger on the name of Judas.
Apart from other places in the Gospels where
he is mentioned, and where the Evangelists
give him the distinguishing epithet of " the
traitor," here St. Matthew, St. Mark, and
St. Luke call him "Judas, one of the twelve,"
and John calls him "Judas, who betrayed
Him." The personal shame of having him
among their number is felt by all four. It is
the shame of a family when a son or a brother
or a sister has disgraced himself or herself,
and therefore all the rest; the shame of a
priest when he hears of a brother-priest having
done something unworthy of his calling, but,
of course, incalculably deeper. They seem to
be reminding themselves of the duty of atone
ment that belongs to the rest because of the
38 The Crown of Sorrow
treachery of one; the zeal they must put for
ward to prove to Our Lord that the rest at
least are faithful.
2. At the same time they seem to be remind
ing themselves that if one such as he may fall
so low, others may do likewise. He was one
of the carefully chosen twelve; therefore he
possessed at the beginning the qualities that
would make a saint, he was given the training
that should have made a saint; from first to
last he had the special affection of Our Lord.
He was entrusted with the materialities of
the Apostolic body; therefore he possessed
gifts of nature qualifying him for this post;
he had in consequence a greater experience
than the others among men, which some seem
to think so valuable in the making of an
Apostle. And yet he fell; his very promotion
brought about his fall; had he been kept in
the background he might never have been
tempted, "Howl, thou fir-tree, for the cedar
has fallen!" As St. Paul wrote long^after-
wards : " 1 chastise my body, and bring it into
subjection, lest while preaching to others I
myself become a castaway."
3. Then there is the multitude : the people
whom Our Lord had cured; the people for
whom He had toiled unceasingly; the people
dear to His heart ; the people who, the Sunday
before, had cried "Hosanna to the Son of
David"; "a great multitude," say two Evan
gelists, with "a band of men and servants,"
says St. John; from "the chief priests and
ancients of the people," says St. Matthew;
from " the chief priests and the scribes and the
ancients," says St. Mark; "from the chief
priests and Pharisees," says St. John. The
The Homage of the Enemy 39
scene is unmistakable. What a growth of
cockle among the wheat, and how quickly had
it sprung up ! All in four short days, the four
days of Our Lord's hardest work on earth, the
four days in which, as never before, He had
vindicated His cause and put His enemies to
silence. It was a proof that He had failed —
He so eloquent, He so genuine, He so deserv
ing of success, who fought besides, not for
Himself, but for His Father, and for the very
people who had here gathered against Him !
Such is the wisdom of the multitude.
Summary.
1. The shame of the other Apostles because of the
treachery of Judas.
2. The fall of Judas, from what; by what means, to
what it came.
3. The multitude, for whom Our Lord had done so
much.
IX.— THE HOMAGE OF THE ENEMY.
" Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that were to
come upon Him, went forward and saith to them ;
Whom seek ye? They answered Him : Jesus of
Nazareth. Jesus saith to them : I am He. And Judas
also who betrayed Him stood with them. As soon, then,
as He had said to them : I am He, they went backward
and fell to the ground. Again, therefore, He asked
them: Whom seek ye? And they said: Jesus of
Nazareth. Jesus answered : I have told you that I am
He. If therefore you seek Me, let these go their way ;
that the word might be fulfilled which He said : Of
them whom Thou hast given Me I have not lost any
one." — JOHN xviii. 4-9.
I. This scene is given to us only by St. John.
St. John on more than one occasion has been
careful to emphasize the fact that Our Lord
40 The Grown of Sorrow
knew what was about to happen. He keeps
us in mind that Our Lord was always God,
even at the moments when He permitted His
weak human nature to be uppermost. Other
Saints have found deep matter for meditation
in this thought — St. Augustine, Ludolph of
Saxony, St. Ignatius Loyola, Fra Thomas of
Jesus, and others. It is as though, while the
panorama of the Passion moves before them,
they keep saying to themselves : " And this
is God all the time!" We may well repeat
the same, at any hour, but especially now when
we look at Our Lord, broken and blood-
bespattered, yet erect and commanding, for the
first time confronting His enemies.
2. " Erect and commanding." Now begins
that characteristic dignity which never leaves
Our Lord throughout the Passion. He con
fronts them; they are cowed and silent, as a
coward crowd is silent when true strength
confronts it. He is the first to speak; and
His words now, at the beginning of the end —
how strange ! — are the same as when He first
appeared. "Whom seek ye?" He asked the
first disciples when they followed Him down
the river-side. " Master, where do You live ?"
was their answer. "Come and see," He said;
and that was His first gathering. Now, how
different! Yet He will have His name pro
claimed even if it be by His enemies. They
shall say definitely at the outset who is their
object of hatred : " Jesus of Nazareth." That
name will be heard again in the next few
days. It will be seen on Calvary. It will be
heard and seen, the abiding object of hatred,
but also "the power of God and the glory of
God," as long as the world shall last
The Homage of the Enemy 41
3. " Wherefore God hath exalted Him above
the highest, and hath bestowed on Him the
name which is above every name; that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bend in
Heaven, on earth, and that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father." Had St. Paul
this scene in mind when he wrote this trium
phant sentence ? "I am He " ; and at the word
"they went backward and fell to the ground."
"I am He," he had said to the Samaritan
woman, and had converted her. " Fear not, it is
I," He had said to the disciples on the water;
and they had been calmed. " Before Abraham
was, I am," was His thundering refutation of
His enemies. And later, when all the trouble
is over, He will come again and say to His
own : " Fear not, it is I "; and with the same
word, " It is I, Jesus," He will turn the per
secutor Saul into St. Paul. There is indeed
great courage for us all in this word : Ego sum,
I am He.
Summary.
1. St John emphasizes the Divine nature in the midst
of the human weakness.
2. "Whom seek ye?"— " Jesus of Nazareth." The
commandinsr. the stamp set on the Passion.
3. The effect of Our Lord's answer : " I am He," then
and at all times.
42 The Grown of Sorrow
X.— THE BETRAYAL.
" And h« that betrayed Him had given them a sign,
saying : Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is He ; lay hold
on Him, hold Him fast, and lead Him away cautiously.
And when he was come, immediately going up to Jesus,
he said : Hail, Rabbi, and he kissed Him. And Jesus
said to him : Friend, whereto art thou come? Judas,
dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss? Then
they came up, and laid hands on Jesus, and held
him." — MATT. xxvi. 48-50; MARK xiv. 44-46; LUKE
xxii, 48.
i. It has been said by some, as a sort of
defence of poor Judas, that he hoped by this
act of betrayal to give Our Lord an oppor
tunity of vindicating Himself before the
people; that he had grown tired of this long
waiting for the Kingdom of God to come,
and intended, as it were, to compel Him at
last to show His power and declare Himself.
But the wording of the text does not seem to
give much sanction to this theory. At the
beginning we are distinctly told that Judas
had at last come to prefer silver and gold to
Jesus Christ; he made a deliberate choice
between two alternatives, and bartered one for
the other. Again, Our Lord's dealing with
Judas in the Supper-room shows deep hard
ness of heart; it is hard to believe that Judas
did not know that Our Lord understood.
Finally, here the fear of Judas is, not that
the treachery should succeed, but that it should
fail. He takes every precaution, and, to make
himself doubly sure, he trades upon the
tender affection of Our Lord, which could be
counted upon to help in the betrayal rather
than to frustrate it.
The Betrayal 43
2. It was as if he said: "Though, Rabbi,
You might save Yourself for Your own sake,
yet let Yourself be captured for mine." And
the greeting of Our Lord confirms this view.
With the greatness of a hero, He lets things
take their course. Had it been Herod, or a
stranger, or the scribes and Pharisees alone,
He might have resisted. He might have
" passed through their midst," as He had done
on a former occasion when they wished to take
His life. He might have flogged them from
before Him, as He did that day when the zeal
of His Father's house devoured Him. He
might have left them on the ground where
they had fallen. But the traitor is His friend ;
the traitor is the trusted Judas; He can only
feel shame along with pity; He can only show
His greatness against Himself now, keeping
down the nausea He must have felt when the
traitor's lips touched His cheek.
3. And the multitude seem to feel the same.
It is difficult to imagine that they would not
have known Our Lord without any special
notification from the traitor. He tells them
Himself a little later that He is perfectly well
known to them, and has been among them
every day of late. They had seen Him, they had
heard Him, they had spoken with Him often
enough; He had Himself already told them
who He was, and His word was better than
the word of a traitor. But with one of His
own at their head they had a certain sense of
security. If He were inclined to touch them,
He might be deterred from the sight of him.
If they had any doubts of their own, the traitor
at their head would seem to justify their pro
ceedings; they could silence their own con-
44 The Grown of Sorrow
sciences, by throwing on him the responsi
bility. So the world has hidden and clothed
its malice under the name of some traitor to
Our Lord.
Summary.
1. The betrayal of Our Lord would seem to have been
deliberate and intentional.
2. Our Lord yields to the treachery of a friend, when
He had not yielded to enemies.
3. The multitude, powerless of themselves, hid them
selves beneath the traitor's name.
XI. — THE HEALING OF MALCHUS.
" And they that were about Him, seeing what would
follow, said to Him : Lord, shall we strike with the
sword? Then one of them that was with Jesus, Simon
Peter, stretching forth his hand, drew his sword, and
striking the servant of the high priest, cut off his ear.
And the name of the servant was Malchus. But Jesus
answering said : Suffer ye thus far. Then he said to
Peter : Put up again thy sword into the scabbard. For
all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
Thinkest thou that I cannot ask My Father, and He
will give me presently more than twelve legions of
Angels? How, then, shall the Scriptures be fulfilled,
that so it must be done? The chalice which My Father
hath given Me, shall I not drink it? And when He
had touched his ear, He healed him." — MATT. xxvi.
51-54; MARK xiv. 47-49; LUKE xxii. 50, 51; JOHN
xviii. 10, ii.
i. What strange circumstances are these
for the working of Our Lord's last healing
miracle. Unlike all the others in the New
Testament, the victim is not one whom
Our Lord has met in the course of His
day's work, a faithful follower, or at least
one who believed in Him and appealed by the
roadside; but he is an avowed enemy, he has
got his wound in an unholy cause, he has re
ceived his wound from one of Our Lord's
The Healing of Malchus 45
own defenders. One wonders what kind of
gratitude He received for such an act of
charity. Surely something; surely the con
version of Malchus ; the fact that we are given
his name, as in the later case of Simon, points
to his being known later to the Evangelists,
and therefore to his being among the band of
the faithful.
2. One wonders, too, what must have been
in the mind of Peter. Poor Peter ! He had
sworn before to stand up for his Master in time
of trouble; his Master had expressly seen to it
that he brought a sword with him to the Garden.
He now does stand up for Him in the best way
he knows how; and in return he is rebuked,
and the "good" he has done is cancelled by
Our Lord Himself. Surely if He could work
such a miracle as this, and under circumstances
such as these, He could do much more. Evi
dently, then, not only is the case hopeless, but
the Master has decided that it shall be hope
less, and there is nothing now to be done but
run away. How easily one can so decide in
questions of this kind, when for His own
reasons Our Lord wills that things shall go
hard with us, that our well-intentioned deeds
shall turn out mistakes, and that we shall be
suffered to say and do nothing in our own
defence.
3. Meanwhile, here once again His own
commanding presence is most wonderful.
From beginning to end it is shown to us that
if not a sparrow shall fall without His Father's
consent, neither shall He Himself be mal
treated without His own permission at each
step. He is always Master; the conscious
ness of it does but make His enemies rage the
46 The Crown of Sorrow
more. His enemies may seize Him, but they
must first fall down before Him. The friend
may betray Him, but he must first be shown
that the Master has not been deceived. The
mob may insult Him, but they shall never be
able to say that to the end He has slackened
in well-doing. And the deliberateness with
which He acts-^-deliberately refusing to ask
His Father, deliberately reversing the prayer
He had offered in the Garden, deliberately
healing the man, while the mob must pause
and look on — all this is very beautiful.
Summary.
1. The cure of Malchus, the last of His cures, stands
alone in its circumstances.
2. The mind of Peter, failing to understand, is totter
ing to its fall.
3. The mind of Our Lord, always Master, always
deliberately free.
XII.— THE PROTEST OF OUR LORD
" In that same hour Jesus said to the chief priests and
magistrates of the Temple, and the ancients and the mul
titude that were come to Him : Are you come out as it
were against a robber with swords and clubs and
staves to apprehend me? I sat daily with you teaching
in the Temple, and you did not stretch forth your hand
against Me. But this is your hour and the power of
darkness. Now all this was done that the Scriptures
of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then His disciples,
leaving Him, all fled away. And a certain young man
followed Him, having a linen cloth cast about his naked
body, and they laid hold on him. But he, casting off
the linen cloth, fled from them naked." — MATT. xxvi. 55 ;
MARK xiv. 48-52 ; LUKE xxii. 52, 53.
I. Again we are struck with the combination
of strength and weakness manifested by Our
Lord. He is able to speak to all this assembly
The Protest of Our Lord 47
" as one having authority," in the way He had
always done before, on the Mount, in the
Temple, on their own ground, as it were ; and
yet here He is unable to do anything for Him
self. He can only permit that feature of His
soul to appear which He has never refused to
show; that special agony, even to weakness,
that it feels with every act of ingratitude.
Indignity to Him is very hard. He will com
plain of it again before the Passion is over,
before the same night is spent, but He will
complain of nothing else. And with what
terrible words He concludes: "This is your
hour and the power of darkness!" It is as
though He knew that man could not of him
self be so cruel. For this he must be allied
with another power.
2. How the multitude and the leaders re
ceived His words we are not told; with con
scious shame, no doubt, hidden beneath tumult
and bravado, but with utter disregard of their
significance. The world is a past master in
the art of ignoring words which it does not
wish to hear. But the disciples received the
words in a stranger way, though one that need
not surprise us. To them they were a knell;
their hopes of years had been crushed in a
moment. "We hoped that this was He that
would restore the kingdom to Israel ;" and now
he says : " This is your hour and the power
of darkness." They forget the warning; they
are scandalized in Him, as He said; they fly
away, every single one of them, apparently
even John. And yet Our Lord had prayed
for them this very night as "they who have
stood with Me in My temptations."
3. One asks oneself the meaning of the
48 The Grown of Sorrow
episode of the man in white. Many strange
details must have happened in the Passion
which have not been recorded; why preserve
such a detail as this ? St. Mark alone tells
the story; some have in consequence surmised
that it was he. Others have suggested
St. John. But him we meet again immedi
ately after, and the linen cloth is strange.
Let us conjecture; we can do no more. The
Passion was above all others a time " for the
resurrection and for the fall of many in Israel."
Is this one of them ? Is this a case of a voca
tion missed because of the difficulty? Had
this man stood his ground, had he in some
way shared with Our Lord the agony of the
moment, might we not have had yet another
name to add to those of Simon of Cyrene, and
Veronica, and the holy women, and the
penitent thief, and Joseph of Arimathea, and
Nicodemus?
Summary.
1. The strength and the weakness of Our Lord before
the multitude.
2. The desertion of the Apostles ; the plausible reasons
they would give.
3. The man in the linen cloth ; is this another vocation
lost?
XIII. — JESUS, ANNAS, CAIAPHAS.
11 Then the band, and the tribune, and the servants
of the Jews, took Jesus and bound Him. And they led
Him away to Annas first, for he was father-in-law to
Caiaphas, who was the high priest of that year. Now
Caiaphas was he who had given the counsel to the
Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die
for the people." — JOHN xviii. 12-14.
I. We leave to scholars the discussion of
the relations between Annas and Caiaphas,
Jesus, Annas, Caiaphas 49
who the two were, why Annas is also called
the high priest, and why Our Lord is taken
first to him, before appearing in the lawful
court. It is enough for us to know the simple
facts, and to meditate upon the procession.
We can follow Our Lord down that hill of
Olivet, which He had ascended and descended
so often, particularly of late, not only when
going to and from the Garden, but in the
glorious procession of Palm Sunday — it was
not far from here that He had stopped that
procession and burst into tears at the sight
of the doomed city before Him — and in His
many journeys to and from Bethany, which
lay in the other valley. Many a time, then,
must Our Lord have thought of all that would
happen on that road, as He passed along it
during these last years. We watch Him now
dragged along ; we remember He is " bound " ;
we hear the prophecy which hints that He fell
in the brook ; we ask ourselves what must have
been the sight of Him that entered the city
gate among that crowd in the darkness. What
a contrast to that which entered by that same
gate on the Sunday preceding !
2. Who was this Annas? He was first
of all a Sadducee, one of those who, as
St. Matthew tells us, " say there is no resurrec
tion," or who, as St. Luke writes in the Acts
of the Apostles, "say there is no resurrection,
neither Angel, nor spirit"; one of those who,
when they had once tried to catch Our Lord,
had been so confuted that "the multitudes
hearing it, were in admiration at His doctrine";
one, therefore, who was not likely to make
much account of the hereafter, or of Him who
spoke of His own resurrection and return.
4
50 The Crown of Sorrow
He was one who had been many times high
priest himself, who had secured that his sons-
in-law should succeed him; one of those who,
so far as it was possible, had converted his
family into a kind of Jewish royal house, which
would resist any kind of intruder.
3. And who was Caiaphas ? He, too, was a
Sadducee ; he believed in no future life, there
fore, perhaps, believed in no Kingdom of the
Messiah. Moreover, he was high priest of
that year; into such hands had the priesthood
fallen even since the days of Zachary, and the
Presentation in the Temple, even during the
very thirty years that Our Lord was living on
the earth! And for his principles, St. John
recalls the scene when, after the raising of
Lazarus, the Council gathered in alarm and
asked each other : " What shall we do, for this
man doth many miracles?" And Caiaphas
answered : " You know nothing. Neither do
you consider that it is expedient for you that
one man should die for the people, and that
the whole nation perish not." A man, then,
whose principle was expediency, whose right
was might.
Summary.
1. The first steps in the Passion should be traced —
from Olivet to the house of Annas.
2. Annas — the Sadducee, the unbeliever, the maker
of a false royal house.
3. Caiaphas — the Sadducee, the one who first
" devised to put Him to death."
The Trial before Annas
XIV. — THE TRIAL BEFORE ANNAS.
" The high priest then asked Jesus of His disciples
and of His doctrine. Jesus answered him : I have
spoken openly to the world, I have always taught in the
synagogue and in the Temple whither all the Jews
resort, and in private I have spoken nothing. Why
askest thou Me? Ask them who have heard what I have
spoken to them ; behold, they know what things I have
said. And when He had said these things, one of the
officers standing by gave Jesus a blow, saying :
Answerest Thou the high priest so? Jesus answered
him : If I have spoken ill, give testimony of the evil;
but if well, why strikest thou Me? And Annas sent
him bound to Caiaphas, the high priest." — JOHN xviii.
19-24.
1. This preliminary trial still shows Our
Lord in all His dignity. He knows that
Annas has no real jurisdiction over Him;
therefore He gives him no direct answer.
More than that, Annas inquires first of Our
Lord's disciples, as if he would gladly involve
them in the ruin of their Master. Here, in
deed, for us English Catholics, is an anticipa
tion of those attempts at involving others by
cross-examination of our martyrs with which
their records are full. But Our Lord sets the
example of a model answer. He does not
deny that He has followers ; indeed, all the
world are His followers; He points ^to all
those who have listened to Him "in the
synagogue and the Temple"; of His very own
He says nothing; of those whom His Father
had given Him He has not lost any one.
2. The answer is exasperating, precisely
because it is so true. It is triumphant, and
therefore to the vanquished it appears as an
impertinence. So does it appear to this court.
"And when He had answered these things,
52 The Crown of Sorrow
one of the officers standing by gave Jesus a
blow, saying : Answerest Thou the high priest
so?" No doubt Our Lord had been struck
already since the affair in the Garden; but
this is the first blow of His life that is recorded.
We hear it fall; we see the livid marks it
leaves upon His face; we know that from
henceforth those blue stripes will be there.
As we look we recall the words of the greatest
of heathen philosophers. When he describes his
ideal of a man, he says that he will have a great
heart which will endure bravely great misfor
tunes, will accept even shame with equanimity.
But there he draws the line; he says there is
one shame which no great man will accept;
to accept it, he says, marks a feeble soul; he
will not endure to be struck in the face. Yet
here Our Lord endures it! One ray say
with truth, that blow marks the boundary line
between paganism and Christianity; the line
where paganism stops and Christianity goes
forward.
3. The blow has fallen; there follows a
solemn silence; for the moment all there
present, soldiers, and high priest, and on
lookers alike, are awed by this wanton act of
shame. They feel that they have overstepped
all bounds. And in the midst of the silence
is heard the solemn rebuke : " If I have spoken
ill, give testimony of the evil; but if well, why
strikest thou Me ?" But they have now waded
too deep ; they will not go back. They break
up the assembly; they pack off the Prisoner to
another court; themselves they slink away like
whipped curs, as a sinner slinks away when he
has done a deed of shame, and in the very act
his conscience rises up and rebukes him.
The Witness before Caiaphas 53
Summary.
1. Our Lord's defence of Himself and of His own.
2. The blow He received; the dividing-line between
paganism and Christianity.
3. The rebuke which followed it, making the sinner
ashamed.
XV. — THE WITNESS BEFORE CAIAPHAS.
" But they, holding Jesus, led Him to Caiaphas the
high priest, and all the priests and the scribes and the
ancients were assembled together. And the chief
priests and the whole council sought false witness for
evidence against Jesus, that they might put Him to
death. For though many false witnesses had come in,
and bore false witness against Him, their evidence did
not agree. And last of all there came in two false wit
nesses. They, rising up, bore false witness against
Him, saying : We heard Him say, I will destroy this
Temple of God made with hands, and within three
days I will build another not made with hands. And
their witness did not agree." — MATT. xxvi. 59-61 j MARK
xiv- 55-59-
I. The court of Annas was no proper court ;
it had no authority whatsoever; it was only
something that had grown up round a man of
strong will, stronger than his relatives whom
he had brought into office, to whom the people
had learnt to pay deference as to a leader.
Hence by it Our Lord had refused to be
judged; He had defied it, and had been re
warded by the blow. But the court of
Caiaphas was lawful, even though unjust;
and at once we find Our Lord treating it with
deference. When it was merely brutal and
false, He treated it with silence; when the
lawful authority asked a lawful question, He
gave it a complete answer, be the conse
quences what they might. As He had said
54 The Crown of Sorrow
on a former occasion, so He Himself did now :
" Whatsoever they command you, observe and
do ; but according to their works do ye not."
2. The witnesses against Him were many.
There will always be found in this world (i)
those who will put the right in the wrong;
(2) those who will give evidence that will
flatter the powers that be. Everyone of us
knows what it is to be misunderstood by even
one; some of us may know what it is to be
deliberately maligned by one, or perhaps two ;
but how many of us have been so maltreated
as to have had many against us, who have,
one and all, deliberately borne false witness,
whose word has been preferred to ours,
though they have clearly lied, and though
they have clearly contradicted themselves and
one another? Many of us have had our
words misquoted against us; some have had
them deliberately twisted; but how many have
had our mere figures of speech turned into
explicit statements, and by an addition of a
word here, and a subtraction of a word there,
have been convicted out of our own mouths ?
3. Yet this and worse is the practice played
upon Our Lord. They go back to His earliest
days of preaching. They pick out His greatest
prophecy. They give it their own interpreta
tion. That interpretation is too absurd even
for the Council to accept it. All the time He
answered nothing. He might easily have
reminded them, had He wished, of His exact
words and their meaning. He might have
shown them that they were themselves their
own accusers ; that they had understood per
fectly well what He had meant, from the
changes they had made in His words. Later,
Condemnation before Caiaphas 55
when He was dead and buried, they showed
that they had understood from their appeal
to Pilate : " This man said while He was yet
alive, After three days I will rise again." But
He said nothing. He would not argue with
such men. To suffer at their hands was no
disgrace; it is never a disgrace to suffer at such
hands.
Summary.
1. Our Lord evaded the question of Annas; in the
court of Caiaphas and Pilate He submitted.
2. The evidence against Him was such as is always
against the truth, but more intense.
3. It did but prove the greater guilt of His accusers ;
hence He had no need to speak.
XVI. — THE CONDEMNATION BEFORE CAIAPHAS.
" And the high priest, rising up in the midst, asked
Jesus, saying : Answerest Thou nothing to the things
that are laid to Thy charge by these men? But Jesus
held His peace and answered nothing. Again the high
priest asked Him and said to Him : I adjure Thee, by
the living God, that Thou tell us if Thou be the Christ,
the Son of the blessed God. And Jesus said to him :
Thou hast said it, I am. Nevertheless I say to you,
hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of the power of God, and coming in the
clouds of Heaven. Then the high priest rent his gar
ments, saying : He hath blasphemed ; what further need
have we of witnesses? Behold, now you have heard the
blasphemy, what think you? But they all answering
condemned Him and said : He is guilty of death." —
MATT. xxvi. 62-66; MARK xiv. 60-64.
i. The witnesses did not deserve to be
refuted ; their best refutation, the only refuta
tion of such as batten on untmth, is silence;
to them, then, Our Lord answered nothing.
But Caiaphas was at least a lawful judge; and
56 The Crown of Sorrow
though he could be ignored when he united
himself with the false witnesses, still, when he
spoke in his own name he had a right to be
answered. Something seemed to tell him this ;
there is a consciousness of it in the words :
" I adjure thee, by the living God." He knows
with whom he is dealing; he knows that this
Man will speak the truth; he knows how
exactly to word his question; he words it as
Peter worded his great confession: "Thou
art Christ, the Son of the living God." That
he should know all this is a terrible confes
sion, a confession of faith. Of all men in the
Passion, none seems more to sin against the
light than Caiaphas; so much does he seem to
sin against it that one wonders how a man
could be so audacious.
2. Caiaphas knew; and he knew, therefore,
what would be the answer of Our Lord; if he
had not known, he might have suspected he
might get some other answer, and that would
have ruined his place. He received the answer
he expected; but he received something more.
Yes, Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the
living God. And therefore the time would
come when the tables would be turned; when
He, not Caiaphas, would be the judge; when
the mystery of Heaven, not the glamour of
this court, would surround Him; and He re
calls the description He had elsewhere given
of His coming at the end of the world. Let
it be noticed that this is the first time in
Scripture that Our Lord is heard to state so
explicitly that He is " Christ, the Son of the
living God."
3. Then came the ending, and the universal
condemnation. What can have been in the
Condemnation before Caiaphas 57
minds of the Council? Either they believed
His words or they did not. If they did not
believe that He was what He declared Him
self to be, then they might indeed have had
Him put to death, but at the same time they
could only have treated Him as one who was
mad — as Herod treated Him, for instance, who
was incapable of faith. Only a madman could
have made such a claim, especially in such cir
cumstances. But they did not laugh Him to
scorn; they did not ridicule; they took Him
seriously, bitterly; they "did protest too
much "; and their cry, " He is guilty of death,"
can only be taken as their own terrible death
sentence.
Summary.
1. The solemn adjuration of Caiaphas seems to prove
that he knew the truth.
2. Our Lord answers, and for the first time says ex
plicitly that He is God.
3. The Council condemn ; their sentence is their own
condemnation.
XVII. — FIRST DENIAL OF PETER.
" But Simon Peter followed Jesus afar off, and so did
another disciple, to the high priest's palace. And that
disciple was known to the high priest, and went in
with Jesus into the court of the high priest. But Peter
stood at the door without. Then the other disciple, who
was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to
the portress and brought in Peter. And when they had
kindled a fire of coals in the midst of the hall, because it
was cold, and were sitting about it, Peter sat with the
servants to see the end, and warmed himself. Now
when Peter was in the court below, there cometh one
of the maidservants of the high priest, the maid that
was portress ; and when she had seen Peter sitting in
58 The Crown of Sorrow
the light and warming himself, and had looked on him,
she said : Thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth, the
Galilaean. This man also was with him. Art not thou
also one of this man's disciples? But he denied Him
before them all, saying : Woman, I am not. I know
Him not. I neither know nor understand what thou
sayest." — MATT. xxvi. 69, 70; MARK xiv. 66-68; LUKE
xxii. 54-57; JOHN xviii. 25.
[NOTE. — There is, perhaps, no scene in Scrip
ture more difficult to harmonize than the
scene of Peter's first denial; yet, as usual
where harmony is difficult, the fact itself can
not for a moment be suspected. The first
three Evangelists give it at the fireside, and
do not say that the maid who challenged Peter
was portress. St. John seems to imply that
the denial took place at the gate as soon as
Peter had entered, and that it was made in
answer to a challenge of the portress. If, as
seems to be right, we must confine the denials
to three, it would appear to be necessary
to give the preference to the account of
St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, and to
take from St. John further details. At the
same time, it is to be noted that St. John puts
the second denial at the fireside, which the
others place after he had left it; the third he
describes as in answer to "the kinsman of him
whose ear Peter cut off," whom the others do
not mention. The narrative of St. John is
throughout much more circumstantial and
dramatic than is that of the others. It reads
much more like the evidence of an eyewitness ;
it is written by one who already knew the
other accounts ; and if, as many suppose,
St. John was " the other disciple known to the
high priest," it may well be the most accurate
First Denial of Peter 59
version. If we allowed four denials, then the
accounts could be easily reconciled — one at
the gate, one at the fireside, and two after
Peter had left it; though here, again, it is not
clear that all are speaking of the same occa
sions. But for the purposes of meditation
we have preferred the traditional three; the
solemn fact remains, and alone concerns us.]
1. Peter had had his warning; he had dis
believed in it; he had despised it; a later word
implies that he had forgotten it; in conse
quence even Peter, the first to declare Our
Lord to be "the Christ, the Son of the living
God," is the first to deny Him.
2. The reason for the fall is clear. It is not
merely fear of the portress; had they been
alone, would he have denied Our Lord at her
taunt? Would she ever have uttered it?
Rather it is that demoralizing influence of a
crowd, of public opinion, close akin to human
respect, which so often seems to paralyze our
lips when we would speak the truth.
3. And the occasion is no less clear. Peter's
motive for going there was good; he went
"that he might see the end." But the motive
was not enough to justify his being there.
He forgot the prayer: "Lead us not into
temptation."
Summary.
1. The neglect of warning.
2. The reason of the fall.
3. The occasion.
60 The Crown of Sorrow
XVIII. — THE FURTHER DENIALS OF PETER.
" And he went forth before the court, out of the gate,
and the cock crew. And again another maidservant
saw him, and she began to say to the standers-by : This
is one of them. This man also was with Jesus of
Nazareth. Thou also art one of them. And again he
denied with an oath : O man, I am not. I do not know
the man. And after a little while, about the space of
one hour after, they that stood by came again and
said to Peter : Surely thou also art one of them, for even
thy speech doth discover thee. Thou also art a Galilasan.
And another man, one of the servants of the high priest,
a kinsman to him whose ear Peter cut off, saith to him :
Did I not see thee in the Garden with Him? Then he
began to curse and to swear that he knew not the man,
saying : Man, I know not what thou sayest ; I know not
this man of whom you speak." — MATT. xxvi. 71-74;
MARK xiv. 69-71 ; LUKE xxii. 58-60; JOHN xviii. 26, 27.
1. Peter has been sufficiently disturbed by
his first denial to become restless; it is with
that restlessness which is peculiar to the first
conscious sense of having done wrong. He
has got up and left the group with an air of
offended innocence, and the group has fol
lowed him with a leer of unaffected contempt.
It^has not been deceived by the denial; but it
triumphs over both the denier and the Denied.
He knows they are not convinced; and they
are happy at the thought that this Jesus of
Nazareth cannot, after all, be very much, since
His followers so easily deny Him and betray
Him. If these made so little of Him, others
could not be expected to do more.
2. Meanwhile, Peter meets another maid,
another of the type that is always on the side
of the crowd, as is the worst of those who seek
for notice at any cost. She has no respect
for him. She has her own end to gain, and
The Further Denials of Peter 61
has only her tongue with which to gain it.
So she stabs, and stabs, and thinks herself
triumphant when her victim turns. And the
poor victim, how he turns ! First, to the
tribunal: "Man, I know Him not!" And of
what is he accused ? Of being a friend of
Jesus Christ ! And what does he deny ?
" I know not the man ! " The Man ! Him
whom but a short time before he had called
" Christ, the Son of the living God" 1 And all
this he confirms with an oath. He must con
form with the usages of his surroundings and
practise their speech. So strong is the silent
influence of evil company on us, no matter
who we be, no matter how carefully guarded.
How often do we hear it said, " If others
would leave us alone it would be easy to avoid
evil doing."
3. It is an hour after. In a crisis such as
this an hour is a long time. Did the trial of
Our Lord, then, even before the spitting and
the buffeting began, take so long? What
could they have been doing with Him all that
time ? For Peter, too, an hour in that crowd
was a long time. What had he been doing?
He had not been standing there silent, that is
clear. He had talked enough for the by
standers to detect that he came from Galilee ;
his speech betrayed him. Perhaps he had said
enough to remind the servant of him in the
Garden ; for Peter was always impetuous, and
unguarded in his speech. The evidence was
overwhelming. The poor man had gone so
far, he could not and would not draw back.
He would only repeat his crime; it was easier
now than at first; having sinned twice, the
third was almost spontaneous.
6s The Crown of Sorrow
Summary.
1. The effect of Peter's first denial, on the audience
and on himself.
2. The second denial : its occasion, the temptress,
its kind.
3. The third denial : the hour's interval, the occa
sion, the ease of the fall.
XIX. — THE CONVERSION OF PETER.
" And immediately, while he was yet speaking, the
cock crew again. And the Lord, turning, leoked on
Peter. And Peter remembered the word that the Lord
Jesus had said to him : Before the cock crow twice
thou shalt deny Me thrice. And Peter went out, and
began to weep, and wept bitterly." — MATT. xxvi. 75;
MARK xiv. 72; LUKE xxii. 61, 62; JOHN xviii. 27.
I. It should not be difficult to spend an hour
in contrition with Peter; if we would enter
into his heart, let us enter into our own, join
ing our own offence with his, realizing how
little has been our provocation compared
with his, and yet how near to his has been our
downfall ; not so dramatic, perhaps, but has it
not been just as despicable? We have had
our warning and we have ignored it; we have
had our occasion and we have risked it; we
have fallen once with an effort, but the second
and third offences have come more easily; in
the midst of our wrong-doing the crowing of
the cock has been heard, but we have hardened
ourselves and^gone on. It is the tale of every
sin. There is always some excuse. We
blame our circumstances; but how often are
we not obliged to say that, in spite of them,
the fault is all our own?
The Conversion of Peter 63
2. "And the Lord, turning, looked on
Peter." It is a shock to discover that Our
Lord had been there all the time. Peter had
denied his Master, not behind His back, not
in a distant place, but within His sight, appar
ently in the very same room with Him, perhaps
even within hearing. " He saved others, Him
self He cannot save," not even from such
insult as this. And yet, with what effect! In
the days gone by, when Jesus and His dis
ciples were passing through Samaria, some
people mocked them; and the disciples in
their indignation begged of Him to call down
fire from Heaven and destroy them. But He
did not; He merely reminded them of mercy
If, then, they had been heard, what now might
poor Peter have expected ? What in any case
might he not have expected ? For surely this
denial cancelled his former confession of faith;
this association with His enemies cancelled
his vocation to the Apostolate ; this weakness
before a servant-girl made him for ever unfit
to be called "the rock." Yet what did he
receive? A look, a look of love; a look of
love mingled with a little reproach; perhaps
the lips moved and he caught the words
"Peter— friend!" as the traitor had heard
"Judas — friend!" in the Garden; but not
a sign of bitterness, or of anger, or of
intention to retaliate.
3. "And Peter remembered." To think
that He could ever have forgotten ! And yet
we know ourselves how blinding, how deafen
ing, sin can be. In the midst of the fascina
tion all warnings are forgotten, all resolutions
ignored — till all is over, and the cry of con
science, " What hast thou done ?" rings in our
64 The Crown of Sorrow
ears and tears our hearts. Now he remem
bered. He remembered the warning. He
remembered the love with which it had been
uttered. He remembered the Communion,
the washing of the feet, the broken Heart of
that evening. He remembered all the Master
had done for him, all He had given him, all
the confidence He had placed in him. He
remembered his own enthusiastic affection,
his great desires. He remembered all his
past failures and the way they had been met.
" And he began to weep." When will the tears
cease ?
Summary.
1. We can enter into Peter's heart best by entering
into our own.
2. The Lord, turning, looked on Peter.
3. Peter remembered, and began to weep.
XX. — THE INSULTS BEFORE CAIAPHAS.
" And the men that held Him began to spit in His
face, and mocked Him, and buffeted Him. And they
blindfolded Him and covered His face, and smote Him
in the face, and the servants struck Him with the
palms of their hands. And they asked Him, saying :
Prophesy unto us, O Christ, who is he that struck
Thee? And many other things, blaspheming, they
said against Him." — MATT, xxvi.67, 68; MARK xiv. 65;
LUKE xxii. 63-65.
I. In a sense this scene is the climax of the
Passion. To a sensitive man of honour like
Our Lord whatever came after could have
been as nothing compared with this hour
of supreme insult. And our own instinct
through the ages has told us that this is of
all the scenes in the Passion the most dread-
The Insults before Gaiaphas 65
ful, since art has attempted to idealize all
the others, but not this. The Agony, the
Betrayal, the Trial, the Scourging, the Crown
ing, the Crucifixion, the Funeral — all these
have been the subjects of great masterpieces ;
but has any artist made an ideal picture of
" the men that held Him began to spit in His
face"? Yet so it was; and the great and
respectable scribes and Pharisees looked on,
and said not a word, perhaps forgot them
selves so far as to join in the spitting; for
nothing so reduces a man to the level of a
savage as hatred. We can only look on dumb
founded, repeating: "They spat in His face;
they spat in His face."
2. Then follows the series of insults, with
an ingenuity of invention which only devilry
can display. They spat in His face. They
mimicked His every movement. His dignity
they mocked as pride ; His silence they mocked
as if He were dumb; His compassion they
mocked as sourness or weakness, making wry
faces hanging down their mouths. They cuffed
Him; they kicked Him; in their desire to out
rival each other, as is the universal custom of
a persecuting mob, they invent strange abuses
of His body on the spur of the moment. They
tied a rag about His eyes. It is something
at least to be able to see one's enemy and
tormentor; but to be prevented from this, not
to know whence the blows are coming, or
what will be next — the agony of it ! They
smote Him in the face, an insult which — as we
have said elsewhere — if accepted without re
monstrance, in the eyes of the world proves
a mean fellow, a coward. And all this He
endured without a word.
66 The Crown of Sorrow
3. Last of all they insulted His divinity.
On other occasions He had shown super
natural knowledge; there were those present
who knew it, or they would never have re
called it now; let Him show it again. He
had proclaimed Himself before the Anointed,
the Messiah; let Him prove it now. " He has
saved others, Himself He cannot save." The
confession of the truth, of deep-down belief
in all the evidence, rings through the whole
tale of its defiance, just as the most savage
persecution is usually a confession that the
persecutors know that they are wrong. They
"do protest too much"; they substitute might
for right; men do not use such violence to
destroy a thing in which they have no faith.
The love of Our Lord cannot go lower down
than this. He has Himself said that "Greater
love no man hath than that he lay down his
life for his friend"; but what are we to say
of this total surrender of honour?
Summary.
1. This scene is the climax of insult.
2. Then follows a series of abuses, such as only a
mob can invent.
3. And last they insult His divinity, thus virtually
confessing their belief.
The Final Jewish Trial 67
XXI.— THE FINAL JEWISH TRIAL.
" And as soon as it was day, straightway all tha
chief priests and ancients of the people and scribes
came together and held a council against Jesus to put
Him to death. And they brought Him into their
council, saying : If Thou be the Christ, tell us. And
He said to them : If I shall tell you, you will not
believe Me; and if I shall also ask yous you will not
answer Me nor let Me go. But hereafter the Son of
Man shall be sitting on the right hand of the power
of God. Then said they all : Art Thou, then, the Son
of God? And He said: You say that I am. Then
they said: What need we any further testimony? For
we ourselves have heard it from His own mouth. And
the whole multitude of them roso up, and led Him
away bound, and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the
Governor."— MATT. xvii. i, 2; MARK xv. i; LUKE xxii.
66-71, xxiii. i.
1. Our Lord's last night on earth is spent
in prison. That fact has been the ground of
endless meditation for all Christianity — above
all, for those whose devotion clings about the
Prisoner of Love in the Blessed Sacrament.
What a lonely night ! What a contrast to the
quiet nights at Nazareth, or on the hillside with
His Father, or even those nights in His
preaching life when He had nowhere to lay
His head, but depended on the charity of
others! It is easier now to "watch one hour
with Him" than in the Garden; now there
is something that fascinates, and stirs compas
sion and love, in the lonely Prisoner.
2. And now the Jews can scarcely wait till
daybreak; one wonders that they left Him at
all. They assemble first among themselves
to make sure of some safe course of action.
Then comes the third trial. This time they
68 The Grown of Sorrow
will have no preliminaries. They have had
enough of the false witnesses. They have
found Him willing and foolish enough to play
into their hands of His own accord. So they
will begin there : " If Thou be the Christ, tell
us." He had told them the night before. But
this time He is not so easy to control. He
begins with a rebuke, to which there is no
answer but brute force; that rebuke which the
persecutor must always meet with cruelty.
"If I say 'yes/ I shall not be believed. If I
prove, you will not meet My proofs. What
ever I do or say, you will condemn Me."
Then, again with that strength which domin
ates the whole story of the Passion, He
speaks the plain truth; first, enough to give
them an escape if they will, but secondly, when
they have explicitly rejected the grace, a clear
statement of His divinity.
3. The condemnation follows. They do
not pass the sentence in so many words ; they
are too cowardly for that. They just assume
His guilt among themselves. " What need we
more ?" And before they have given them
selves an answer they are already on their
way through the streets. Is there anything
more bitter to endure, by those who are in
the right, than to be assumed guilty with
out trial? If on trial, to have all they say
assumed to tell against them; whichever way
they turn, to whatever they appeal, having
all taken as proof of guilt, and all the time to
be aware that the enemy more than suspects
their innocence ? Is not this the galling ele
ment of all persecution of the Church, particu
larly since the Reformation? Her error
cannot be proved, because she is not in error;
The End of Judas 69
therefore either it must be assumed, or her
truthful words must be so twisted till they
become error.
Summary.
1. The night with Our Lord in prison.
2. The last trial in the Jewish court.
3. The condemnation : " Not proven, but guilty."
XXII —THE END OF JUDAS.
" Then Judas, who betrayed Him, seeing that He
was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the
thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the
ancients, saying : I have sinned in betraying innocent
blood. But they said : What is that to us? look thou
to it. And casting down the pieces of silver in the
Temple, he departed and went and hanged himself with
a halter. But the chief priests, having taken the pieces
of silver, said : It is unlawful for us to put them into
the corbona, because it is the price of blood. And
having consulted together, they bought with them the
potter's field, to be a burying-place for strangers.
Wherefore that field was called Haceldama, that is, The
field of blood, even to this day. Then was fulfilled that
which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying :
And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of
Him that was valued, whom they prized of the children
of Israel. And they gave them unto the potter's field,
as the Lord appointed to me." — MATT, xxvii. 3-10.
i. "Then Judas, who betrayed Him." The
Evangelists cannot help repeating the de
scription. It rankles in their hearts from first
to last; it stings them to think that one of
themselves should have brought all this about.
"Repenting himself." A strange word here!
Repenting, yet not repenting; for it was a
repentance which led to greater misery. No
man commits sin but he repents, in one sense;
he will wish in some way that it were other-
70 The Grown of Sorrow
wise. But the repentance which makes us
merely despise ourselves for cowards and
worse is not enough; there is repentance of
this kind in despair.
2. "I have sinned." Judas confessed; so
did the Prodigal, using the very same words ;
so did the penitent David; yet what a differ
ence in the content of their words ! Peter
repented; yet with what a different result!
Remorse is not contrition. Remorse follows
on every sin so long as conscience is yet alive;
it is Nature's guide to contrition; it may be
made contrition by the life of love. But left
alone it is merely self-disgust; it leads to
despair, and despair leads to suicide, actual
or virtual; how many souls have utterly
destroyed themselves because they could no
longer endure the sight of their own sinful-
ness ! That remorse may become true sorrow
it needs new life ; new life can come only from
love; of this Judas had none; the Prodigal,
and David, and Magdalen, and Peter, had
much; therefore much was forgiven them.
3. " What is that to us ?" This is the other
side of sin. Man sins against God, and
appeals to God for mercy, and is forgiven;
man sins to please the world, and appeals to
the world for mercy, and is spurned aside.
This is the very ugliest side of the world, its
contempt for its own victims. It is nothing if
not self-righteous. It acepts another's service
in evil; it flatters the man or woman that will
ruin himself or herself to please it ; it pays down
its due, and thereby claims that it has fulfilled
all justice. But it contemns the slave who
has served it; it washes its hands, its immacu
late hands forsooth, of all responsibility; the
The First Charge before Pilate 71
soul that has submitted to be ruined must look
to itself. "Am I my brother's keeper?" If
my brother or my sister is willing to be ruined,
is it not my brother's or my sister's fault, even
if I am the cause of ruin? The quibbling,
cruel world ! Yet, poor world ! it has enough
of its own guilt to bear.
Summary.
1. The meaning of barren repentance
2. The meaning of true repentance.
3. Repentance and the two masters : God and the
world.
XXIII.— THE FIRST CHARGE BEFORE PILATE.
" Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Gover
nor's hall. And it was morning, and they went not
into the hall, that they might not be defiled, but that
they might eat the Pasch. Pilate therefore went out to
meet them, and said : What accusation bring you
against this man? They answered and said to him:
If He were not a malefactor, we would not have
delivered Him up to thee." — JOHN xviii. 28-30.
I. Here begins another of those dreadful
processions, this time in broad daylight, right
across the city, at an hour when the streets
are busiest. A victim-priest of the revolu
tion in Portugal once told me that of all the
sufferings they had to undergo, and all were
very terrible, none was so hard as the proces
sions from time to time, to which they were
submitted, through the streets of the city, with
its hooting mob, made up of their own fellow-
citizens, for whom they had given all their
labour. At the gate of the Roman Governor's
palace the procession stopped. The leaders
would not enter. The formalities of their
72 The Grown of Sorrow
religion forbade it, and formalities were with
them much more important than the Ten
Commandments. So is the tendency in the
East. So long as one observes the rites one is a
good, religious man; sin is at worst only an
uncleanness, which a rite duly observed can
remove, which a rite at times can even sanc
tion. Bbt is this tendency only Eastern?
Do we of the West never sacrifice truth for
convention, for rite ?
2. Pilate had to humour these Eastern
fanatics. No doubt that was the policy of
the Western government then, as it is more or
less to-day. He must listen to them; as far
as possible he must let them have their own
way; it is enough if in the end the iron hand
of law prevails. So, like a judge in a modern
Eastern court, he asks them ; not that he may
hear the charge, but that he may discover what
lies underneath. He knows they will not tell the
truth; he knows the real motive will be hidden
at the first; they will begin with what they
think will appeal to him as a Roman, as a
judge, as a guardian of the peace; the rest
will come later.
3. And he is not mistaken. " What accusa
tion bring you against this man ?" he asks
Their answer is obviously no answer. They
dare not yet say : " He declares Himself to be
the Son of God." That would, as yet, mean
nothing to Pilate. They dare not even accuse
Him outright of being a malefactor; they
know that an investigation, on strict Roman
lines, would prove their charge untrue. So
once more, as the cowardly world will always
do, it formulates its charge as an assump
tion. "If He were not a malefactor, we
The Second Charge before Pilate 73
would not have delivered Him up to thee."
Here, then, is the first charge; how unlike
anything we have yet heard ! " Which of
you shall accuse Me of sin?" He had once
asked them ; and they could answer nothing.
" Because of Thy good works we blame Thee
not," they had confessed another time. "He
hath done all things well," had cried the people
on another occasion. If I have done evil, give
testimony of the evil," He had said before
Annas. And now, this! — "If He were not a
malefactor!"
Summary.
1. Watch the dragging of Our Lord through the city.
Watch the formalism of the priests before Pilate.
2. Watch the attitude of Pilate, heartless, contemptu
ous, politic.
3. The first charge : Our Lord is assumed to be a
malefactor.
XXIV. — THE SECOND CHARGE BEFORE
PILATE.
" Pilate then said to them : Take Him you, and judge
Him according to your law. The Jews therefore said
to him : It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death ;
that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, signifying
what death He should die. And they began to accuse
Him, saying : We have found this man perverting our
nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and
saying that He is Christ the King. And Jesus stood
before Pilate the Governor. And Pilate asked Him,
saying : Art Thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus
answered him and said : Thou sayest it. And the
chief priests and ancients accused Him in many things.
And when He was accused He answered nothing." —
MATT, xxvii. n, 12; MARK xv. 2-5; LUKE xxiii. 2, 3;
JOHN xviii. 31.
i. Pilate was not deceived; he knew that
more would follow. If this was all, they need
not have come to him ; over mere malefactors
74 The Crown of Sorrow
their own court had jurisdiction. Again, if
they had had any definite charge they would
have made it; they would not have hidden
themselves behind an assumption. So he
forced them further. " If that is all," he said,
"it comes into your court, not mine. So take
Him you, and judge Him according to your
law." His device succeeded. Judgment upon
a malefactor was not what they wanted ; they
wanted blood, and before they had realized
what they were saying they revealed their
secret. "It is not lawful for us to put any
one to death." Now at least Pilate knew what
was intended. It was a battle between him
and them for the life of Jesus Christ; it was
he, not Our Lord, who was upon his trial.
2. The first shot had failed; that He was a
malefactor was of no avail. They must try
another; they will charge Him with high
treason. And the charge has three degrees :
First, "We have found this man perverting
our nation " — He who had said : " I am come
not to destroy, but to perfect." "Seek first
the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all
other things shall be added unto you." But
this was of no avail; what was their "nation"
to Pilate? Then came the second: "We
have found this man forbidding to give
tribute to Caesar" — He who, when these very
Pharisees had tried to catch Him in His
speech, had said : " Render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's." This charge, too,
Pilate could ignore; he knew well enough
whether or not Rome was being cheated of
her revenue; he knew, too, who were the men
against whom that charge might have been
more justly preferred.
The Second Charge before Pilate 75
3. Then came the final accusation: "We
have found this man saying He is Christ the
King." "Christ" meant nothing to Pilate,
except that he may have known that the
ancient Kings of Israel were "anointed." But
" King " did mean something. It was a word
both hateful and contemptible in the Republic
of Rome. It was the mark, moreover, of a
barbarian. But it was also a name to suspect.
As Romans hated the term, so barbarians
revered it; and more than one revolt had been
raised by some usurper simply taking on him
self the title. About this, then, he would
inquire. "Art Thou the King of the Jews?"
he asked, partly in contempt, partly in curi
osity, partly, perhaps, in suspicion. The answer
is appallingly precise. Even Pilate himself
must have been startled. " Thou sayest it.
1 am." Now, if Pilate pleased, he had tech
nical ground to proceed against Our Lord;
he had "heard it from His own mouth"; he
needed no further evidence ; yet his heart told
him that for all that the man before him was
not guilty.
Summary.
1. The first charge of high treason.
2. The second charge of high treason.
3. The third charge of high treason.
76 The Crown of Sorrow
XXV. — THE DEFENCE BEFORE PILATE.
" Then Pilate again asked Him : Answerest Thou
nothing? Behold in how many things they accuse
Thee. Dost not Thou hear how great testimonies they
allege against Thee? But Jesus still answered him not
to any word, so that the Governor wondered exceed
ingly. Pilate therefore went into the hall again and
called Jesus, and said to Him : Art Thou the King of
the Jews? Jesus answered: Sayest thou this thing of
thyself, or have others told it thee of Me? Pilate
answered: Am I a Jew? Thy nation and the chief
priests have delivered Thee up to me. What hast
Thou done? Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of
this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My
servants would certainly strive that I should not be
delivered to the Jews, but now My kingdom is not
from hence. Pilate therefore said to him : Art thou a
King, then? Jesus answered : Thou sayest that I am
a King. For this was I born, and for this came I into
the world, that I should give testimony to the truth.
Everyone that is of the truth heareth My voice.
Pilate saith to Him: What is truth? And when he
had said this he went forth again to the Jews, and
saith to the chief priests and the multitude : I find no
cause in this man." — MATT, xxvii. 13, 14; MARK xv.
4, 5; LUKE xxiii. 4; JOHN xviii. 33-38.
i. In this conflict between the world and the
spirit we are struck first by the assumption
of authority in the one, and the reality of
authority in the other. Pilate is indeed on
the chair of justice, and Jesus is in the dock;
but from first to last it is easy to see which
is master, which acts upon the formality of
power, and which on the basis of true strength.
The formality leads to bullying, and bullying
always betrays weakness, while strength can
afford to be silent, and silent strength is often
the best proof of innocence. To such an
argument Pilate was unaccustomed ; it made
him wonder; it made him a little afraid; he
The Defence before Pilate 77
felt he could not afford to despise this man,
however helpless and at his mercy He
appeared. So from that time to this has the
silence of Christ held the attention and stirred
the fear of the judging world.
2. Pilate would examine Him in private.
On only one point would he satisfy himself.
He knew He was not a malefactor; he made
nothing of the many other things that were
alleged against Him; but he must know about
this title of King. He must not betray his
own personal interest; he must not let it be
supposed that he has any soul in the matter;
he must pretend that it is merely a question
of law that must be solved. Our Lord tries
to get him to acknowledge the thing that is
in his heart; He would have him own that
he seeks, not as an empty judge, but as one
who really "looked for the Kingdom of
Israel," as other Romans had done who had
already crossed His path. But Pilate " would
not." He would be a man of the world to
the end.
3. Still Jesus would fight for his soul. He
would let Pilate see that he had nothing to
fear from His Kingship and His Kingdom.
He would thus lead him on to acknowledge
the Kingdom that underlay all others, the
truth which was the foundation of all king
doms, of all society. He would bring home to
him that it was possible to be a member of
the Kingdom of Christ, and thereby all the
better member of a kingdom of man. Pilate
understood enough. He heard from Our
Lord's own lips the confession that He was
a King; but, unlike the scribes and ancients,
he did not at once say : What need we any
78 The Crown of Sorrow
further testimony ? He said : I find no cause
in Him.
Summary.
1. The silence of Our Lord is and always has been
the answer to His calumniators.
2. The examination of Our Lord is a struggle to
make Pilate true, not merely conventional.
3. It fails ; but it wins a confession.
XXVI.— THE SUBJECT OF HEROD.
" But they were more earnest, saying : He stirrcth
up the people, teaching throughout all Judaea, begin
ning from Galilee to this place. And Pilate, hear
ing Galilee, asked if the man were a Galilaean.
And when he understood that He belonged to Herod's
jurisdiction, he sent Him away to Herod, who himself
was also at Jerusalem in those days." — LUKE xxiii. 5-7.
I. The examination had been in private; the
priests therefore did not know what had
passed between the judge and their Victim.
But something assured them that the charge
of high treason had gone home. They must
cling to that. So they fall back upon it, this
time colouring the truth so that it seems the
blackest lie. For, indeed, what they now have
to say is only the simple truth; He had stirred
up the people, He had taught throughout all
Judaea, He had begun from as far as Galilee
and had reached even up to that place. Every
where he had proclaimed His Kingdom, say
ing : "Do penance, for the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand." He had so won the
hearts of men that these scribes and Pharisees
and priests and ancients had met together in
dismay, saying : " What do we ? for behold all
the world goes after Him?" He had gone
The Subject of Herod 79
about doing good; the good He had done
had been acknowledged even by His enemies;
and now because He had done it, because He
had given Himself unsparingly for God and
man, therefore, with the cleverness of Satan,
it could be shown that He was a danger to
the State. And the argument still holds.
2. "Pilate, hearing Galilee, asked if the man
were a Galilsean." This would seem to show
conclusively that Pilate had heard little or
nothing of Our Lord before. Though "all
the world " had been going after Him ; though
there had been the great display of palms on
the Sunday before; though in the booths and
the market-place the question whether Jesus
of Nazareth were or were not in the city was
on the lips of many; still, the great ones in
the land knew nothing of Him, and those who
guided the destinies of nations had never
heard of the man that was revolutionizing
the world. "Jesus of Nazareth passes by";
and only the blind see Him, and the lame
follow Him, and the deaf hear Him, and the
weak things of this world are. chosen to con
found the strong ; but the great and the strong
do not know Him, never hear of Him, or if
they do only know Him as one who " stirreth
up the people " and must be suppressed.
3. " He sent Him away to Herod." Here
begins Our Lord's third procession through
the city; we cannot recall these processions
without reminding ourselves of their peculiar
sufferings, the special insults to which they
exposed Him "in the house of them that loved
Him " — insults which, in the crowded interest
of the rest, are too easily overlooked. On
Pilate's part it was an act of cowardice, a
8o The Crown of Sorrow
deliberate shirking of responsibility ; since he
could not bring himself as yet to put an inno
cent man to death to please the mob, he hoped
the less scrupulous Herod would do it for
him. He had played with the situation from
the beginning; now his playing was bringing
its results — growing guilt upon himself; in
creasing suffering for Our Lord.
Summary.
1. The new charge, found in the truth, the wells hav
ing been poisoned.
2. The ignorance of Our Lord shown by Pilate, in
spite of many circumstances.
3. Pilate's cowardice before temptation, increasing
his own guilt and the suffering of Our Lord.
XXVII. — JESUS BEFORE HEROD.
" And Herod, seeing Jesus, was very glad, for he
was desirous of a long time to see Him, because he
had heard many things of Him, and he hoped to see
some miracle wrought by Him. And he questioned
Him with many words. But He answered him
nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood by,
earnestly accusing Him. And Herod with his soldiers
despised Him, and mocked Him, putting on Him a
white garment, and sent Him back to Pilate. And
Herod and Pilate were made friends together that same
day, for before they were enemies one to another." —
LUKE xxiii. 8-12.
i. Our Lord will have it so arranged that
the three great sources of evil in this world
shall be brought face to face with Him in this
hour of darkness; and Herod is particularly
easy to distinguish. He is the man who repre
sented the loathsome resultant of Eastern
and Western luxury combined; the man who
belonged to no creed, to no nationality, to no
moral standard; the man who had defied all
Jesus before Herod 81
decency in his marriage, who had murdered
John the Baptist to please a dancing girl, and
that in a most heartless fashion, while he him
self sat in the midst of revelry; the man who
had one besetting misery, the fear of his
victim rising up against him; the man who
alone of all mankind had won from Our Lord
a term of indignant contempt. " Go and tell
that fox!" Jesus had said of him on one
occasion. Thus he stands, the judge of Jesus
Christ, this personification of that selfish
luxury and indulgence which stalks through
the world, defying God and man, but despised
by man and God, the source of misery upon
misery.
2. The trial befits the judge. His one aim
in life is self-indulgence; even a criminal
must serve for his amusement. And this
Criminal is one who will excellently serve his
turn. He is said to work miracles; He is the
most expert conjuror of the day. He is said
to be a prophet; He is the best inventor of
witticisms. He shall give proof of His skill,
for Herod's amusement and for the amuse
ment of his court; otherwise He shall pay for
it. Meanwhile, the light and easy way in
which he treats the whole affair makes "the
chief priests and scribes " anxious. The judge
does not appear to be in earnest; perhaps in
the end he will dismiss the whole affair and
let Jesus go. Perhaps Jesus Himself will
work some miracle and win His liberty. So
they renew their accusations; they clamour
all around against Him. "The chief priests
and scribes stood by, earnestly accusing Him."
3. But Herod is disappointed ; the Criminal
ignores him. Our Lord had before him a
82 The Crown of Sorrow
" fox," a contemptible creature ; He now
treats him as such. The tables are being
turned. Herod had thought to make Our
Lord appear as a fool before his court; and
behold, it is he that is being made to look
foolish. This must be stopped. Since Jesus
will not play His part of a fool. He shall be
made one. Since He will obviously win if
fairly treated, He shall be conquered by
laughter and mockery and derision, the
favourite resort of the luxurious, self-indul
gent world. So the mockery begins; Herod
begins it, demeaning himself that he may
demean Our Lord; the soldiers follow the
example of their master, and Our Lord stands
there, in His white fool's robe, the despised of
men, the outcast of the people, a new torture
in the story of the Passion.
Summary.
1. Herod, the representative of the cowardly indul
gence of men.
2. His trial of Our Lord turned into a scene of
merciless revelry.
3. To save himself from disgrace, Herod dressed
Our Lord as a fool.
XXVIII. — THE FIRST SENTENCE OF PILATE.
"Then Pilate, calling together the chief priests and
the magistrates and the people, said to them : You
have brought this man to me as one that perverteth the
people; and behold I, having examined Him before
you, find no cause in this man touching those things
wherein you accuse Him. No, nor yet Herod, for I
sent you to him, and behold, nothing worthy of death
is done to Him. I will chastise Him, therefore, and
release Him." — LUKE xxiii. 14-16.
i. This scene closes another chapter in the
story of the Passion. We know the last step
The First Sentence of Pilate 83
in serious temptation. We would have the
gratification, but we would not have the
responsibility which it entails. We protest we
do not want the sin; we only want the satis
faction; and we try to persuade ourselves in
consequence that we shall not be guilty. So
here. The Jews have shirked the responsi
bility of murdering Our Lord; Herod has
shirked it; now Pilate makes a last attempt to
do the same before the final plunge. Later,
it is true, he makes other attempts; but here
he accepts the responsibility of the last word.
Therefore, he makes it as formal as possible ;
as throughout the rest of the Passion, he
seems to say, " If 1 am guilty, others shall be
guilty with me"; and it is only at the end,
when the Jews have agreed to share the full
responsibility with himself, that he finally
gives way. This, again, is another of the
characteristics of grievous sin; it seems to find
some covering for its malice in making and
finding others as bad as itself.
2. But the worst of all is the sentence :
"Therefore." Because the two chief courts
in Jerusalem have found this man not guilty,
therefore I will chastise Him. Because He is
evidently something above us all, command
ing us all even as He stands in bonds, there
fore I will chastise Him. Because He has
spoken to me of the truth, has roused in me
deeper thoughts, deeper reverence, than any
one has ever roused before, therefore I will
chastise Him. Because, if I would allow
Him, He would teach me things that would
alter all my life, therefore I will chastise Him.
Because these people envy Him — in other
words, acknowledge by their hate that He is
84 The Crown of Sorrow
something better than themselves — therefore I
will chastise Him. And then I will let Him
go. I will still pose as His deliverer. He
shall still have to say that He owes His life
to me. To chastise Him is the less of two
evils. How often has the same sentence been
passed upon Him and His ownl "He is not
guilty; others envy Him; I will chastise Him
therefore; I will reduce Him; and then I will
let Him go."
3. The picture is pitiable; there are few
sights more pitiable than a judge that is un
just through cowardice. Here judges play
the weakling; the clamouring mob is at
the mercy of its own contemptible passions;
Herod, a disappointed and secretly embittered
creature ; the Victim alone the Master of them
all. One feels through it all how Gethsemani
is having its effect, and that He has indeed
been strengthened. He is no longer, as before
the prayer in the Garden, " sorrowful even
unto death," a broken man, frightened and
beside Himself with fear. Had He so willed
it, He might have gone through the Passion
in the same broken way; He might have gone
on crying : " Take this chalice from Me."
But no ; His prayer has been heard, and the
strength to endure never leaves Him.
Summary.
1. The first sentence of Pilate is an attempt to
distinguish between sin and its guilt.
2. The cruelty of the sentence is manifest ; yet how
often repeated !
3. In the whole scene, how mean do all the actors
appear except Ona.
Jesus or Barabbas? 85
XXIX. — JESUS OR BARABBAS?
" Now upon the solemn festival day the Governor
was accustomed to release to the people one of the
prisoners, whomsoever they demanded. And he had
then a notorious prisoner that was called Barabbas, a
robber who was put in prison with seditious men, who
in the sedition had committed murder. And when the
multitude was come up, they began to desire what he
always had done to them. And Pilate answered them
and said : You have a custom that I should release
one unto you at the Pasch. Will you, therefore, that I
release unto you the King of the Jews? Whom will
you that I release to you, Barabbas, or Jesus who is
called Christ? For he knew that through envy the
chief priests had delivered Him up." — MATT, xxvji.
15-18; MARK xv. 6-10; LUKE xxiii. 17; JOHN xviii. 59, 40.
i. We do not know much of this annual
custom of the Roman power in Jerusalem.
No doubt it was one of those formalities of
clemency by which an alien conqueror tries to
humour and reconcile the conquered. Hence,
no doubt, it would have been mainly political
prisoners that would have been released; the
release of thieves and cut-throats could have
had no meaning. Our Lord, as "King," as
"the Christ," as a "seducer of the people," as
one who "forbade to give tribute to Caesar,"
was mainly a political prisoner; the charge of
being a "malefactor" had long since died
away. Barabbas, on the other hand, though a
political prisoner, was primarily a malefactor:
he had made use of a sedition, not so much for
purposes of State, as for robbery and murder.
The contrast was marked; Pilate emphasized
it; he hoped by making an impossible offer to
compel the people to acquiesce.
86 The Grown of Sorrow
2. But the people were at bay. Under other
circumstances they could never have wished for
Barabbas; thieves and cut-throats could have
won no favour from them. Still, though they
did not want Barabbas, they wanted Our Lord
still less ; their hatred of Him made their hatred
of Barabbas appear almost like affection; at
all events it should appear like affection in
order the more to justify themselves in their
own eyes. So had it been between Pilate and
Herod; their scorn of Our Lord had softened
their scorn for each other into friendship.
And so it is to-day; the "sign which shall be
contradicted" has drawn together in alliance
causes and powers the most irreconcilable.
They do not hate each other less, but they hate
Him more; and that becomes their bond of
sympathy and union.
3. It remains to study the words of Pilate.
He knew that envy was at the bottom of the
charge; and the envy was mainly confined to
"the chief priests." Envy of what? "He
stirreth up the people." " Behold, all the world
goes after Him." "They dared not lay hands
on Him for fear of the people." "It is ex
pedient that one man should die for the
people." They envied Him His power of the
people. Therefore to the people, over the
heads of the chief priests and leaders, Pilate
would appeal. The people had before wished to
make Him King ; would they now desert Him ?
They had hailed Him as " He that cometh in
the name of the Lord " : would they now
surrender, in place of Barabbas, " Jesus Who is
called the Christ"? There was reason to
hope that they would be shamed into releas
ing one Whom they had recently acclaimed,
The Rejection 87
one Who, above all, had such influence upon
them.
Summary.
1. Jesus, political prisoner and "malefactor";
Barabbas, malefactor and political prisoner.
2. The hatred of Jesus the bond of union.
3. Pilate appeals to the people over the heads of the
priests.
XXX.— /THE REJECTION.
" But the chief priests and ancients persuaded the
people that they should ask Barabbas and make Jesus
away. And the Governor, answering, said to them :
Which will you have of the two to be released unto
you? But the whole multitude cried out at once, say
ing : Away with this man and release unto us Barabbas.
And Pilate spoke to them again, desiring to release
Jesus : What will you then that I do with Jesus, that
is called Christ, the King of the Jews? But they all
again cried out : Crucify Him, crucify Him, let Him
be crucified ! And Pilate said to them the third time :
Why, what evil hath He done? I find no cause of
death in Him. I chastise Him, therefore, and let
Him go. But they were the more instant with loud
voices : Crucify Him, let Him be crucified ! and their
voices prevailed." — MATT, xxvii. 20-24; MARK xv. 11-15;
LUKE xxiii. 18-23.
i. There is hope in the thought that if left
to themselves the multitude might have been
won over by Pilate. Seldom, if ever, is it that
the multitude is wholly to blame for its mis
deeds. The multitude is usually irresponsible ;
it is the leaders that are to blame — a principle
of history which historians often ignore to
suit their purpose. Here we can follow the
influence at work; the persuasion of the
Governor; the meek yet commanding figure
of Our Lord; the acknowledgment, if they
would listen to it, that they had suffered only
kindness at His hands. But on the other
88 The Crown of Sorrow
hand was the awe of the chief priests and
ancients; the blind excitement about they
knew not what; the knowledge that to accept
this Christ was to accept a new standard, such
as condemned their present life.
2. So they made their choice, recklessly,
sweepingly, with their eyes closed to all con
sequences, as a man will do whose passion
governs him, who has at last become the
victim of a temptation, who will see but one
object to be gained, the immediate satisfaction
of his desire, come what else may hereafter.
But the course along which passion leads is
hard to alter; the leap leads to a headlong fall
beyond; reason is ignored, restraint is re
sented, each step made does but compel one
to more and more daring. So it is with the
Jews. Christ is a malefactor. No; He is not.
Christ is a traitor. He is not that either.
Christ is a sham and a mountebank. He is
not guilty. " Very well, whatever He is, male
factor or not, traitor or not, mountebank or
not, still 'Away with Him! Crucify Him, let
Him be crucified!' even if it be for no reason
whatsoever but because we wish it."
3. Pilate pleaded; let us give him this credit.
Let us recognize his sincerity in that at least
he wished to save Our Lord. Later Our
Lord Himself virtually told him that he was
the least guilty of the chief actors in the crime.
He had but human standards, the standards
of circumstance, and opportunity, and conven
tion; he had no God in his horizon, "truth"
to him meant nothing; in all this he was no
worse and no better than the world in which
he lived, or than the world in which we live
ourselves. He, too, would see no flaw in the
The Condemnation 89
saying of Caiaphas : " It is expedient that one
man should die for the people." Left alone,
he might have done no harm to anyone. He
was one to whom his religious-minded wife
could give a warning. But in a moment such
as this, as is invariably the case when the
standard of the world is tested, he broke down.
Summary.
1. The multitude, itself, perhaps, inclined to good,
is beaten by its leaders.
2. Hence the choice, reckless of consequences.
3. Pilate, the type of this world's judgment, is also
inclined to good, but is beaten.
XXXI. — THE CONDEMNATION.
" And Pilate, seeing that he prevailed nothing, but
rather that a tumult was made, having taken water,
washed his hands before the people, saying : I am
innocent of the blood of this just man ; look you to it.
And all the people answering said : His blood be upon
us and upon our children. Then Pilate, being willing
to satisfy the people, gave sentence that their petition
should be granted. And he released unto them
Barabbas, who for murder and sedition had been cast
into prison, whom they had desired, but delivered up
to them Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to be cruci
fied according to their will." — MATT, xxvii. 24-26; MARK
xv, 15; LUKE xxiii. 23-25; JOHN xix. 13-16.
I. It is in this scene that Pilate displays his
greatest meanness, which is common. The
priests and ancients showed it when, having
induced Judas to sin, they turned on him and
said : " What is that to us ? Look you to it."
Cain showed it when, after the murder of his
brother, he said : "Am I my brother's keeper ?"
Of all the meanness of this mean world, noth
ing is so mean, yet scarcely anything is so
90 The Grown of Sorrow
common, as to induce another into sin, or to
sin along with another, and then to decline
the responsibility of the crime ; to murder
another's soul, another's honour, and then to
say : " 1 am innocent of the blood of this man.
He could have helped Himself if He had
chosen. I am in a difficult position. If there
is guilt at all, it is not mine who do the deed,
but His who permits me to do it, or those who
make me do it. I am innocent, though the
deed is mine."
2. And yet one is appalled at the opposite
extreme. If it is mean to put on other
shoulders the guilt of sin of which we have in
any way been the cause, it is even more terrible
so to contemn the guilt of sin as to accept it
for oneself with both hands. There are those
who know no better, to whom sin has no more
meaning than an illicit prank, though these
are fewer than at first it might seem. There
are those who look on sin as a matter of this
life alone, an offence against man, against the
law, against their own common sense and
conscience. Of these one need not here think.
And there are those who, with eyes wide open,
knowing both the meaning and the guilt of
sin, yet in their passion will accept the full
burthen, the burthen which broke Our Lord
Himself in the Garden. " His blood be upon
us and upon our children" is an act of more
determined suicide than that of Judas; and yet
in every great sin that is determinedly com
mitted one hears the echo of the same words.
3. There follows the condemnation and the
preliminary scourging; it is a fitting scene
after this terrible manifestation of weakness
on one side and malice on the other. "I will
The Condemnation 91
chastise Him, therefore, and let Him go," has
now been changed into, " I will chastise Him,
therefore, and then will crucify Him." The
worldling has been beaten; his support has
only added to the agony of the Passion; at
the last moment he has betrayed his imagined
Protege; and he has done it with a show of
dignity and injured innocence which, he hopes,
may secure his good name and good estate.
But Our Lord is scourged; Our Lord is
stripped naked, and tied to a pillar, and
scourged; in the presence of anyone who cares
to come and see, He is treated as a felon and
scourged. We can come ; we can see ; but how
long can we dare to look ?
Summary.
1. Pilate, the type of that mean worldling who would
sin but lay on others the guilt.
2. The crowd, the type of that other extreme which
would defy guilt.
3. For all this Our Lord is scourged
XXXII. — THE CROWNING WITH THORNS.
" Then the soldiers of the Governor, taking Jesus
into the court of the palace, gathered together unto
Him the whole band, and stripping Him, they put
a scarlet cloak about Him. And platting a crown of
thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His
right hand. And they came to Him, and bowing the
knee before Him, they mocked Him, and began to
salute Him, saying : Hail, King of the Jews ! And
they gave Him blows, and they did spit upon Him,
and they took the reed and struck His head, and bow
ing their knees, they worshipped Him." — MATT, xxvii.
27-29; MARK xv. 16-19; JOHN xix. 14, 15.
I. When Our Lord prophesied His Passion
to His disciples on His last journey to Jeru-
92 The Grown of Sorrow
salem, He seemed to linger upon the scene
here described, as though it had for Him a
sense of special horror. "Behold we go up
to Jerusalem," He said, " and the Son of Man
shall be betrayed to the chief priests, and to
the scribes and ancients, and they shall con
demn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to
the Gentiles. And they shall mock Him, and
spit upon Him, and scourge Him, and kill
Him; and the third day He shall rise again."
Throughout meditation on the Passion there
is little need to look for application; its own
dead weight should be enough, pressing down
on us as it pressed down on Him; in scenes
such as this, in particular, we need do no more
than try to realize what they contained. To
do so is to grow in sympathy, and sympathy
is love.
2. The chief actors in this scene were
Roman soldiers, men of blood, of no principle,
fostered in brutality. They gathered in their
numbers, thus encouraging each other, rival
ling each other, in ingenious cruelty. They
had been trained in contempt for the title of
King; how much more must they contemn
one whose claim had been already held up
to mockery! So — they stripped Him; the
shame of it ! — they clad Him in the mock robe
of a King! — they seated Him upon a mock
throne! — they made a mock crown, of the
thorny brambles used for the fire, and ham
mered down upon His head! — they took a
reed from the rushes lying on the floor,
and put it in His hand, and behold He was
crowned a fool king ! We can hear the ribald
laughter. We can see the writhing form,
helplessly rolling beneath the pressure of the
The Crowning with Thorns 93
thorns. We can ask ourselves what it means,
and be aghast at the thought that love is its
only explanation.
3. After the crowning must come the doing
of homage. They came to Him in a mock
procession. They strutted up to Him, they
bowed down before Him, they genuflected.
They saluted Him, and said : " Hail, King of
the Jews ! " in a mocksolemn voice. And then,
as each rose in turn from his act of obeisance,
when it was the custom for a courtier to make
his offering, even as at Bethlehem the Magi
laid out their gifts before Him, then was the
moment for individual ingenuity. As they
rose up, one would strike Him in the face;
another would spit upon Him; another would
hammer down the crown more tightly ; an
other would snatch the reed from His feeble
hand, and would smite Him with it; another
would prefer his foot, or the flat of his hand,
perhaps fling at Him the filth on the floor.
So do they worship Him : and we ?
Summary.
1. This is a scene which Our Lord particularly felt;
we should find it easy to compassionate.
2. First is the mock crowning of the King, by such
men, in such a manner.
3. Then is the mock homage paid to Him, with all its
cruel devices.
94 The Crown of Sorrow
XXXIII.—" ECCE HOMO."
" Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith to
them : Behold I bring Him forth to you, that you may
know that I find no cause in Him. (So Jesus came
forth, bearing the crown of thorns, and the purple
garment.) And he saith to them: Behold the man!
When the chief priests, therefore, and the officers had
seen Him, they cried out, saying : Crucify Him, crucify
Him ! Pilate saith to them : Take Him you, and
crucify Him, for I find no cause in Him. The Jews
answered him : We have a law, and according to
that law He ought to die, because He made Himself
the Son of God."— JOHN xix. 4-7.
1. Pilate, by making this public show of
Our Lord crowned with thorns, sanctioned the
cruelty of the soldiers. If they had not done
it at his order, at least by this he gave it his
approval. Indeed, he must have known all
the time what was being done, since he chose
this particular moment, and this particular
condition of the Victim, for the demonstra
tion. And he gives his reason for his con
nivance; in his own mind he is cruel that he
may be kind. By reducing Our Lord to this
pitiable condition, he hopes to win the pity
even of His enemies. Hence we may con
clude that never in all the Passion does Our
Lord appear more pitiable, more "a worm
and no man, and the outcast of the
people," than when He drags Himself up
those steps, bent with exhaustion and agony,
a mangled remnant of a body, clad in nothing
but a scarlet rag, with a helmet of thorns upon
His head, to be shown as a spectacle to His
own people.
2. " Ecce homo "— " Behold the man ! " For
indeed it needs to be labelled as a human
"Ecce Homo" 95
being, this grovelling creature, this "worm
and no man," whose humanity seems to have
been beaten out of Him, and to have left noth
ing but a heap of blood and flesh. " From the
crown of His head to the sole of His foot
there is no soundness in Him"; this is liter
ally true. And on the other hand, while He
is a man and not a lower creature, who will
say now that He is more than man? Who
now will say that He is God? He is man,
"the most abject of men," and no one, pagan
or Jew, can reconcile this with their idea of
God. Surely then, now, if only out of pity
and contempt, they will let Him go. So
might well argue the pagan Pilate, and com
fort his conscience that this act of flagrant
injustice was after all most just — that line of
argument which the merciless, temporizing
world is for ever using to itself.
3. But not so the Jewish chief priests. It
was not that they were by nature more cruel
than Pilate; paganism is always by nature
cruel ; it was that religious cruelty — corruptio
optimi pcssima — can outstrip any cruelty that
is in human nature. And the reason for their
cruelty is at last made manifest. We have
had it expressed in the courts of Annas and
Caiaphas ; we have heard it in the course of our
Lord's life; but so far it has not been uttered
before Pilate. Now, in the paroxysm of their
rage, the truth appears. " We want His life,
not because He is a malefactor, not because
He perverteth our nation, not because He for-
biddeth to give tribute to Caesar, not because
He sayeth He is Christ the King, but because
He made Himself the Son of God. We want
His life because this declaration goes against
96 The Grown of Sorrow
us and our ideas. Such a Son of God is not
the Son of God for whom we look. There
fore, let Him be crucified."
Summary.
1. The scene of the " Ecce homo" wins our pity
and compassion, perhaps more than any other.
2. He is " a worm and no man," in the mind of the
pagan proved not to be divine.
3. But in the mind of the Jew this very sight might
prove His Godhead; therefore He must die.
XXXIV. — THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH
PILATE.
ts When Pilate therefore had heard this saying, he
feared the more. And he entered into the hall again,
and he said to Jesus: Whence art Thou? But Jesus
gave him no answer. Pilate therefore saith to Him :
Speakest Thou not to me? Knowest Thou not that I
have power to crucify Thee, and I have power to
release Thee? Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not
have any power against Me, unless it were given thee
from above. Therefore he that hath delivered Me to
thee hath the greater sin." — JOHN xix. 8-n.
I. Our Lord once said: "He that is not
with Me is against Me." But there are those
who seem to be neither for Him nor against
Him; who favour Him, but will not be allied
with Him; who encourage Him, but will not
help Him; who are friends with Him, but will
not confess Him; who acknowledge His good
works, but yet do not and will not know Him ;
who admire Him as a man, but as God have
no interest in Him; if they have heard of Him
as the Son of God, it has only made them rest
less, then curious, then assertive of their own
authority, lest they be conquered by Him;
The Last Interview with Pilate 97
finally, because He has proved harmless to
them, they have in some way shown them
selves favourable to Him. Such, for the most
part, is the non-religious world — above all, the
non-religious ruling world. It inquires, it
threatens, but always assumes that it, and it
alone, has "power to crucify, and power to
release."
2. There is another element in the world of
men, which, as Our Lord here says, " hath
the greater sin." It is that which consists of
those on whom religion has set its mark. To
have known Him and to have rejected Him;
to have condemned Him because He has
"made Himself the Son of God"; to have
stirred up the non-religious world against
Him on this account; to have done Him to
death, ignoring His claim, ignoring His good
works, ignoring His singular and thrice-
proved innocence ; to have so confused the
issue that the Son of God should be done to
death as a political danger: those who have
done this have "the greater sin." The powers
that rule the world have the standards of the
world, and these powers they have from God,
though they know Him not ; but they pretend
to no more than the things of this world,
until another power compels them to take
cognizance of the things of God. Then per
force they must judge God by their own
standards, for which He is too great. Then
they find themselves not with Him, but
against Him.
3. But the three forces are at workineacK
one of us. One part is
another is not with Him,
it be against Him; and thi/ in most of us
98 The Grown of Sorrow
is the power that is strongest. Then there is
the third, the power within us which would
have its own complete way, which would
make its own faith and its own morals, which
knows from afar that the teaching of the Son
of God is for it "a hard saying," which cannot
hope to serve two masters. This sets itself
against the Son of God; it lays at His door
all manner of charges, finding their justifica
tion in His mutilated words or His interpreted
actions. It denounces Him to the neutral
element within us, not at first on the ground
that He is our enemy, but that He is the
enemy of human freedom. Hence the battle
in each soul and for each soul.
Summary.
1. Pilate represents here the "neutral" world.
2. The Jews represent the avowed enemies of faith.
3. In each one's soul Christ, Pilate, and the Jews
have their counterparts.
XXXV.— THE LAST DEFEAT OF PILATE.
" And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release Him.
But the Jews cried out, saying : If thou release this
man, thou art not Caesar's friend, for whosoever maketb
himself a King speaketh against Caesar. Now when
Pilate had heard these words, he brought Jesus forth,
and sat down in the judgment-seat, in the place that is
called Lithostrotos, and in Hebrew, Gabbatha. And
it was the Parasceve of the Pasch, about the sixth hour,
and he saith to the Jews : Behold your King ! But
they cried out : Away with Him, away with Him,
crucify Him ! Pilate saith to them : Shall I crucify
your King ? The chief priests answered : We have no
King but Cassar. Then therefore he delivered Him to
them to be crucified." — JOHN xix. 12-16.
I. "From thenceforth Pilate sought to re
lease Him." The sentence seems out of place.
The Last Defeat of Pilate 99
Had not Pilate been seeking to release Him
from the very outset ? He had twice said that
he would do so. Yet St. John clearly means
something very particular by this renewed
statement. Evidently this new charge, of
"making Himself the Son of God," and the
dignity with which Our Lord had received it,
had had a deep effect. There was something
more than human in one Who through all
this could remain so calm and commanding,
Who could with such firmness act as the
Judge of His judges, and yet would not move
a finger in His own defence. Everything had
gone in Our Lord's favour; this last charge
of all, that He was the Son of God, was con
firmed by all that had gone before. Pilate
would save Him if he could.
2. Now was the critical moment; the Jews
must play their last card, must surrender their
all to gain their point. For a moment it
looked as if at this last moment they were
about to be baffled. But Pilate, like every
Roman, like every Englishman, like every man
who is proud of an ideal, had the weakness of
his strength. Whatever else he was, he was
a Roman; attack him there, and there was no
knowing what he might not be induced to
do. He did not realize that to be a true Roman
it was first necessary to be a true man. " Thou
art not Caesar's friend." This was a revela
tion. He had been shielding a "King";
might this be construed as un-Roman ? Jesus
was innocent; He was a doer of good; He
was there "out of envy"; but He had some
kind of title, which He claimed ; was not that
enough? Whatever else Pilate was, no slur
must be cast upon his Roman honour.
ioo The Crown of Sorrow
3. The ruse succeeded; but at what a cost!
"The chief priests answered: We have no
King but Caesar!" Speaking for their whole
people, in the presence of Jews, Gentiles, and
Our Lord Himself, these chief priests made a
formal renunciation of their inheritance. It
was not merely that they rejected Our Lord;
they no longer said they would not have Him
to reign over them; their renunciation is
more sweeping: "We have no King but
Caesar." They renounce their independence
as a nation ; they tear up the promise of God,
cherished through the centuries, of the King
to Whom was promised the throne of David
His father; they were no longer the chosen
people of God; they would sacrifice their
birthright that they might compass their
design; the Kingdom was taken from them,
as Our Lord had foretold, and given to a
nation yielding the fruits thereof.
Summary.
1. Pilate sought more than ever to release the " Son
of God."
2. But the argument of disloyalty to his superior
beat him.
3. And the Jews, accepting Caesar, renounced for
ever their own inheritance.
Simon of Gyrene 101
XXXVI.— SIMON OF CYRENE.
" And after they had mocked Him, they took off the
purple cloak from Him, and put on Him His own gar
ments, and led Him away to crucify Him. And as
they led Him away, they found a man of Cyrene,
named Simon, who passed by coming out of the coun
try, the father of Alexander and of Rufus ; him they
forced to take up His cross to carry after Jesus." — •
MATT, xxvii. 31, 32; MARK xv. 20, 21; LUKE xxiii. 26;
JOHN xix. 16.
1. Catholic devotion lingers over this last
journey of Our Lord from the hall of Pilate
to the hill of Calvary, and one may well in
meditation follow Him step by step as far as
one is able. The Evangelists tell the story
of this journey in the fewest words, as if they
were anxious to hurry over it; no doubt the
journey itself was a hurried thing, the enemies
of Our Lord being only too eager, now that
the doom had been definitely secured, to have
everything over and done with as soon as
possible. There must be no delay, no hin
drance; Pilate might again change his mind
at the last moment; and besides, the Paschal
hour was coming on. The distance from the
hall to the hill was but half a mile; but the
streets were crowded, there were many turn
ings and corners, there was some confusion
in the making of the procession with its com
bined Jews and Romans and its three victims,
and, above all, the exhausted state of Our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself made them wonder
whether He would reach the place of execu
tion alive.
2. So the hurried march began. Tradition
has rilled up many gaps, and we may well
io2 The Grown of Sorrow
include them here. They restored to Him
His clothes, not so much out of humanity, but
that He might be the more easily recognized
on the road, and because the clothing of an
executed man was the perquisite of the execu
tioners. He received His cross; there was
joy mixed with sorrow in the gift. From this
solemn moment; with this weapon He was
to conquer; this was to be His standard, for
each and all of His followers to embrace. He
went a little further; He stumbled and fell;
for there in front of Him was something
which had caught His eye, and had shaken
Him with emotion. It was His Mother,
standing with a few companions at a corner
of the street. Where had she been all this
time ? Saints tell us many details. They saw
one another; probably there was no word;
but we can well imagine her " Behold the hand
maid of the Lord " struggling with her " Son,
why hast Thou done so to us ?" as she watches
her Child pass by.
3. Then the strength of Our Lord begins to
give out. He must be assisted, or He will
die on the way. A labouring man of Cyrene
meets the procession. He has no interest in
this business; it is to him only one more out
break of a cruel Eastern mob, and he would
gladly pass it by. But he is stopped, and
"forced to take up His cross to carry after
Jesus." He is annoyed; he is ashamed; he is
insulted; he resents being made the servant
of a criminal. Yet we are sure that before
he had laid that cross down he had become
a follower of Our Lord in a fuller sense; for
the Evangelists linger with love over his
name, and over the names of his two sons,
The Women of Jerusalem 103
telling us without any doubt that they are
among their friends to whom the whole
Church would be eternally indebted. We live
our day; we do little things and great; one
day we walk down a street, and a sufferer
meets us, and a cross is flung on our shoulders
and we resent it, and that is the moment of
our lives.
Summary.
1. The scene of the Way of the Cross, and the circum
stances, should be taken in detail.
2. The first stations : the receiving of the cross, the
first fall, the meeting with the Mother.
3. Simon of Cyrene is forced to take up the cross to
carry after Jesus.
XXXVII.— THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM.
" And there followed Him a great multitude of
people and of women, who bewailed and lamented Him.
But Jesus, turning to them, said : Daughters of Jeru
salem, weep not over Me, but weep for yourselves and
for your children. For, behold, the day shall come
wherein they will say : Blessed are the barren, and
the wombs that have not borne, and the breasts that
have not given suck. Then shall they begin to say to
the mountains : Fall upon us, and to the hills, Cover
us. For if in the green wood they do these things,
what shall be done in the dry?" — LUKE xxiii. 27-31.
i. This little scene, told appropriately by
St. Luke, the Evangelist of sympathy and the
friend of women, comes as a great relief in
the long tale of agony. Hitherto one might
have been led to suppose that all Jerusalem
was against Our Lord. Now we discover in
the crowd some at least who sympathize; and
these are not a few, for St. Luke describes
The Grown of Sorrow
them as "a great multitude of people and of
women." The scene, therefore, as usually
described and pictured is misleading. Not
only women bewailed Him, but a great multi
tude besides; these were not met along the
roadside by accident, but they " followed
Him"; they did not merely weep at the sudden
sight of so much suffering, but they "be
wailed and lamented" Him continuously. It
is a joy to us to know that these were there;
we would give much to know the name of
even one in that " multitude." There is some
thing that tells us that compassion such as
this must find its reward in Heaven.
2. To this multitude only, and directly only
to the women in this multitude, does Our
Lord appear to have spoken all the way from
the Prsetorium to Calvary. And His words
are as mysterious as their setting; they recall
the thunder-clouds that hang over the pro
phets of old, they almost repeat the warnings
of His own last days in the Temple. They
are not to weep over Him; but that we may
justly suppose He did not literally mean.
He "looked for one that would weep together
with Him, and there was none"; in the words
of another prophecy, He appealed : " All you
that pass by the way, attend and see if there
be sorrow like to My sorrow." All His life
He had shown that He was hurt when He was
cut; that He was full of gratitude to any
one who showed Him the least interest or
sympathy. And now the very fact that He
spoke to this group shows that He felt their
regard, even as later He felt the companion
ship of the penitent thief, and of Mary and
Johti.
The Women of Jerusalem 105
3. But like those whose power of sympathy
is very great, for the moment the future suffer
ings of others overcame His own. His com
passion was greater than His Passion ; He
suffered in others even more than He suffered
in Himself. He recalled to them the prophecy
of Osee : "Samaria hath made her King to
pass as froth upon the face of the water.
And the high places of the idol, the sin of
Israel shall be destroyed: the bur and the
thistle shall grow up over the altars : and they
shall say to the mountains : Cover us; and to
the hills : Fall upon us." The doom was on
the city because it had not known the day of
its visitation ; this even now Our Lord cannot
put away from His mind. "For if in the
green wood they do these things, what shall
be done in the dry?" What do the words
mean ? Does St. Peter paraphrase them when
he says : "If the just man shall scarcely be
saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner
appear ?"
Summary.
i. " A great multitude of people and of women "
sympathized with Our Lord.
a. Our Lord cherished that sympathy.
3. But His own power of sympathy made Him feel
for them even more.
io6 The Crown of Sorrow
XXXVIII.— THE CRUCIFIXION.
" And bearing His own Cross, He went forth to
that place which is called Calvary, but in Hebrew
Golgotha. And they gave Him to drink wine mingled
with myrrh. And when He had tasted, He would not
drink. And there were also two other, malefactors, led
with Him to be put to death. And when they were
come to the place they crucified Him there ; and tha
robbers, one on the right hand, and the other on the
left. And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith i
And with the wicked He was reputed." — MATT, xxvii.
33> 345 MARK xv. 22, 23; LUKE xxiii. 32, 33; JOHN xix.
17, 18.
1. This crowning act of the Passion, the
Crucifixion, is told in a cold, matter-of-fact
way by all the Evangelists. The details are
the same in each case; including every varia
tion and addition, we have but a few lines.
The exact spot we know. Scholars may dis
pute about other sites, the Cave of Bethlehem,
the House of Nazareth, the place of the Last
Supper, but of Calvary there is no reasonable
doubt. The Evangelists themselves are care
ful to note the spot; they take the same care
over no other, giving the name in two
languages, etc. No wonder; for it is the
most sacred spot upon this earth — the one
spot which has been steeped in the Blood of
Our Saviour Jesus Christ, the one source from
which has sprung the stream that has regener
ated the world.
2. The details of the Crucifixion are few.
The executioners had still in them a touch
of legalized humanity. They offered Our
Lord the partly stupefying drink which was
offered to all condemned criminals before the
butchery began. We could have known
The Crucifixion 107
beforehand how it would be received. He
tasted; why did He even taste? Was it as
an act of condescension, of gratitude for a
kindly deed? He was always courteous; He
would not spurn an act of kindness even on an
occasion such as this. But He would not
drink; not in spite of His maddening thirst;
that He should do so to avoid the coming
pain is unthinkable. "The chalice which My
Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"
And to do so, that He may drink it to the
dregs, He must resist the soothing chalice
offered Him by man. There is something
peculiarly strong, even while it is peculiarly
agonizing, in this rejection of the cup that is
already touching His lips. If we could only
have the same strength !
3. The only other fact noted is the company
in which He was crucified. " Two other male
factors," says our translation, as if the Greek
idiom best fitted the occasion — "two other
malefactors," implying that. He was already
one. Indeed, "with the wicked He was re
puted." St. John cannot resist calling atten
tion to the exact fulfilment of this prophecy.
It is true this charge against Him was soon
set aside; with Pilate it had not the least
weight; nevertheless, at the very end, King or
no King, Son of God or only son of man,
seditionmonger or not, it was after the manner
of criminals and in the company of criminals
that He was actually put to death. Truly, as
St. Paul says, " He was made sin." Nowhere
does Our Lord come nearer to man than when
He so submits to be nailed down to earth'
among them. St. Paul again and again dwells
upon the simple fact. In his Eastern way he
io8 The Grown of Sorrow
dwells affectionately, almost fancifully, on its
manifold significance. And the Church has
clung with both her arms round the foot of
that cross ever since, while the drip of the
blood has fallen unceasingly upon her.
Summary.
1. The hill of Calvary, the most sacred spot in the
world.
2. " When He had tasted, He would not drink."
3. Our Lord died with malefactors, and as one of
them.
XXXIX.— THE TITLE.
" And Pilate wrote a title also, and he put it upon
the cross over His head. And the writing was : This
is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. This
title, therefore, many of the Jews read, because the
place where Jesus was crucified was near to the city,
and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin.
Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate : Write
not, The King of the Jews, but that He said, I am the
King of the Jews. Pilate answered : What I have
written I have written." — MATT, xxvii 37 ; MARK xv. 26;
LUKE xxiii. 38; JOHN xix. 19-22.
i. The sentence had been pronounced, and
had been promptly carried out; no time had
been allowed for reflection or for cooler judg
ment; the chief priests had seen to this, as
the Devil sees to it when he has once won the
soul to consent to grievous sin. The only
thing that Pilate could now do was to justify
himself in the eyes of all the world ; the world
was his judge, not God, nor truth, of which
he affected to know nothing. So he wrote
with his own hand the "title," "in Hebrew, in
Greek, and in Latin," so that all the world
might know. "This is Jesus of Nazareth,"
the man from turbulent Galilee, from despised
NazaretK, who had of late disturbed the peace
The Title 109
of Jerusalem, and had made Himself a trouble
to authority. "This is the King of the Jews,"
the one thing of which He had been con
victed; before Pilate himself He had said:
"Thou sayest that I am a King" ; and though
He had not said, " I am King of the Jews,"
though He had added, "My kingdom is not
from hence," though Pilate had known for
certain that His Kingship would not clash with
the authority of Caesar, still, the half-truth
must be proclaimed that the execution might
be justified. The world is ruled by half-
truths.
2. But this was not enough for His enemies.
Pilate may have sentenced Him on the ground
that He made Himself a King, but they had
done Him to death "because He made Him
self the Son of God." Either Our Lord was
the "King of the Jews" or He was not. If
He was, then He was also Messias, and
Messias was the Son of David, and the Son
of David was the Son of God. If He was not,
then He would have been put to death, not
by Jewish law, which had no such sentence,
but by Roman law alone; and the chief priests
would be exculpated. To leave the "title" as
it stood might set the people thinking; they
might argue along the line we have just men
tioned, and the conclusion might make "the
last state worse than the first."
3. But Pilate was unmoved, unmoved with
the desperation of one who knows he has done
great wrong, and who turns in hate upon those
who have driven him to it. He knew he had
done wrong; he knew that now they were say
ing in their hearts,: "What is that to us?
Look you to it" He knew, too, on Our
no The Crown of Sorrow
Lord's own evidence that "they who have
delivered Me to thee have the greater sin";
therefore, if he could he would deprive them of
their palm of victory. He would thwart them
if he could, insult them if he could; if this
"title" did not please them, then all the more
would he insist upon it. But why did it not
please them ? " He knew that for envy they
had delivered Him." Their very fear snowed
that the man was their King, and that they
knew it. Then, let come what might, he had
saved himself in the eyes of the world; he
had left them guilty and responsible; he would
leave written what he had written.
Summary.
1. Pilate called Him " King of the Jews " to save his
own reputation.
2. The chief priests resented it for fear of theirs.
3. Pilate found satisfaction in turning on those
who had led him into crime.
XL. — THE FIRST WORD; THE GARMENTS.
" And Jesus said : Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do. Then the soldiers, after they
had crucified Him, took His garments (and they made
four parts, to every soldier a part, casting lots upon
them what every man should take), and also His coat.
Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top
throughout. They said then to one another : Let us
not cut it, but let us cast lots for it whose it shall be;
that the word might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the prophet : They have parted My garments among
them, and upon My vesture they have cast lots. And
the soldiers indeed did these things. And it was the
third hour, and they crucified Him." — MATT, xxvii.
35 ; MARK xv. 24, 25 ; LUKE xxiii. 34; JOHN xix. 23, 24.
i. Our Lord appears to have spoken the
first of His seven words, recorded only by
The First Word ; the Garments 1 1 1
St. Luke, while He was yet being nailed to
the cross. We know how excessive torture
has wrung prayer from the lips of martyrs
and other sufferers, who have found in the
effort some counteracting power to endure.
So it had been with Him in the Garden. And
now, at this last act in the drama, His prayer
is the spontaneous expression of that which
is deepest in his heart Whatever else Our
Lord is, the deepest thing in Him is forgive
ness. He had offered it to Judas, and it had
been rejected; to Peter, and it had been
accepted; to Annas, to Caiaphas, and most of
all to Pilate, and it had been ignored; now
He includes all in His offer, for if His execu
tioners are prayed for at such a moment, then
what soul may not hope ? " Not for the world
do I pray, but for those whom Thou hast
given Me out of the world," He had said but
the evening before. And now He lets us see
how far His prayer extends. It is as though
He said : " Not for the world do I pray, which
is a dominating spirit; but for every in
dividual soul that is in the world, and that I
would gladly rescue from it."
2. The dividing of the garments is men
tioned by each of the Evangelists, but is
elaborated by St. John. Through the last
scenes of the tragedy, St. John has his eye
fixed upon prophecy and its fulfilment. He
seems to be asking himself, Why all this?
And he finds his answer in the unity of all
revelation. To St. John, St. Augustine is a
perfect antithesis; for as the first unites the
past with the event, St. Augustine unites in
it all the future. St. John sees in the saving
of the seamless garment the fulfilment of the
ii2 The Crown of Sorrow
past; the other sees the prophecy of that which
is to come. To the end of time the enemies
of Our Lord will crucify Him. They will rob
Him of His garments and divide His worldly
possessions among them. But His seamless
garment, the Church herself, they will never
divide; she shall remain intact, though they
appropriate her for their own.
3. "And the soldiers indeed did these
things," concludes St. John. " And it was the
third hour, and they crucified Him," concludes
St. Mark. It was in the middle of the day,
in the sight of all the world, with the greatest
publicity that was possible, that Our Lord
was put to death; not in a secluded prison-
yard, with just the official witnesses present
and no more, and with all the care that modern
humanity demands. We look on the sight;
we are fascinated by it to this day, this bleed
ing body of Our Lord, the stream from which
overflows and drowns all the world ; we hear
Him say, "I, being lifted up, will draw all
things to Myself," and we watch "all things"
yielding, gradually, gradually, to the fascina
tion.
Summary.
1. He prayed for His enemies.
2. His garments were divided, but His seamless
robe was not parted.
3. He was crucified in the sight of all the world.
The Mockery 113
XLI. — THE MOCKERY.
* And ifiey sat down and watched Him. And the
people stood beholding. And they that passed by
blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying :
Vah, Thou who destroyest the Temple of God, and in
three days buildest it up again, save Thy own self ;
if Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
In like manner the chief piiests with the scribes and
ancients, mocking, derided Him, saying : He saved
others, Himself He cannot save. If He be Christ the
King of Israel, if He be Christ the Son of God, let
Him now come down from the cross, that we may see
and believe. He trusted in God; let Him now deliver
Him, if He will have Him, for He said : I am the
Son of G.0^'" — MATT, xxvii. 36-44; MAKK xv. 20-32;
LUKE xxiii. 35-37.
i. With those whose consciences are not yet
hardened by iniquity, with ordinary children
and young people, with grown-up men and
women who have lived to be true, a great sin
committed has a certain paralyzing effect.
The poor sinner rises up from it as if dazed;
he has lost something, ne can scarcely know
what; it seems to him that henceforth life must
be another thing; the sun, the air, the flowers
of the field, seem to accuse him; the laugh is
off his lip, the brilliance faded from his eye,
the very skin of his body seems swarth and
shiny; having done that which is the degrada
tion of a man, his very manhood seems to
have oozed from him. It is true of the in
dividual; it is true of an inhuman crowd; and
as "they sat and watched Him," and "the
people stood beholding," we seem to find the
paralyzing sense of guilt and clamminess com
ing over those around the cross, silent and
condemning.
ii4 The Crown of Sorrow
2. Of course, to remain under the spell is
not to be endured. It will lead either to
despair or to contrition. Since perfect happi
ness has been forfeited, which can rest only
on the peace of a good conscience, then
happiness of another kind must be secured.
Conscience must be buried in confusion, its
voice must be silenced by uproar; the sinner
and his accomplices must clamour themselves
out of their stupor into the new life to which
they have doomed themselves. So we see
them always doing; so we see them here.
The spell is broken ; " they passed by blasphem
ing, wagging their heads"; "in like manner
the chief priests with the scribes and ancients,
mocking, derided Him "; cowards before, they
ire now more brutal cowards still, putting a
bold face on their shame, a howling laughter
above their misery — one knows the type too
well.
3. But the language is beyond mistake; in
moments of strong passion the secrets of the
heart appear. "If Thou be the Son of God,
save Thy own self." That is at the root of
all. The fear that indeed He is that is not
yet dead. "If He be Christ, the King of
Israel, if He be Christ, the Son of God, let
Him come down from the cross, that we may
see and believe." Could anyone have uttered
such a cry who did not already in his heart
believe ? " He saved others, Himself He can
not save." Another confession, even as was
that in the better days : " Because of Thy good
works we blame Thee not, but because Thou,
being but a man, dost make Thyself the Son
of God." Dear Lord, how this self-condemn
ing cry has rung through the world ever since.
The Penitent Thief 115
We accept Christ as our doer of good, we
accept Him as a Prophet, we condone "Ho-
sanna to the Son of David"; but Son of God
He shall not be ! If He makes that claim, then
all His very deeds shall be turned against
Him.
Summary.
1. The paralysis of the guilty crowd.
2. The recovery in noise and confusion.
3. The language of their abuse.
XLIL— THE PENITENT THIEF.
" And the soldiers also mocked Him, coming to Him
and offering Him vinegar and saying : If Thou be the
King of the Jews, save Thyself. And the selfsame
thing the thieves also that were crucified with Him
reproached Him with, and reviled Him. And one of
these robbers who were hanging, blasphemed Him,
saying : If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us. But
the other, answering, rebuked him, saying : Neither
dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same
condemnation? And we, indeed, justly, for we receive
the due reward of our deeds ; but this man hath done
no evil. And he said to Jesus : Lord, remember me
when Thou shalt come into Thy Kingdom. And Jesus
said to him : Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt
be with Me in Paradise." — MATT, xxvii. 44; MARK
xv. 32; LUKE xxiii. 36-43.
i. It is easy to meditate upon this scene in
the Passion. The soldiers are of little account;
they act as do those of their class, with no
opinion of their own, but catching at that
which pleases authority. Hence the terms of
their abuse; being Roman soldiers, the "King
of the Jews" has no meaning to them, but
evidently it has some supernatural meaning to
the chief priests; hence they bid Him "save
Himself," which to a Roman would be a
n6 The Crown of Sorrow
foolish taunt. With the thieves it might be
different. They at least were Jews, even if
they had long since laid aside all thought of
religion; from their lips the taunt is akin to
that from the lips of those who have once had
the faith, but have it no longer, and who,
having lost it, and having in consequence lost
much more beside, then cry out against faith
as being a delusion and bankrupt. They
thrust Our Lord aside; they deliberately
choose their own path; then they take this as
proof that He is not.
2. But often such people find their best rival
among themselves, One will rise up who will
have at least the humility to recognize his own
guilt ; whether there is Christ or not, at least
he himself has onty got his own deserts;
whether there is Christ or not, at least there
is a just God. This leads to another recog
nition: that of injustice done to others.
Whether this is Christ or not, at least He is
not guilty as we are. Thus there are three
steps, seen often enough in ordinary life. The
man who has done wrong, and will acknow
ledge it, will find the discovery of God not
difficult. The discovery of God will soon
adjust his attitude to others; and this will
make his duty to them easy.
3. Then comes the climax. There may be
many ways to the discovery of Our Lord, but
none is so easy, none so illuminating, as that
of the penitent thief. He is not taught by
books; it is not proved to him by argument;
it begins with the defence of a good man :
"This man hath done no evil." On the con
trary, this man hath done nothing but good.
Therefore this man's word is to be trusted.
The Penitent Thief 117
On the contrary, all that is evil is ranged
against Him ; it has done Him to death, it has
numbered Him with ourselves. And mean
while He does nothing; He says nothing; He
dies without a word, without defence. Who
can this man be, with Whom is all that is
good, against Whom is all that is evil, Whose
death alone will satisfy the world ? The truth
flashes on him; he cries out: "Lord, re
member me," and he receives in reply instant
canonization. In spite of all the suffering,
that " Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt
be with Me in Paradise," was a moment of
pure joy for Our Lord.
Summary.
1. The abuse of the soldiers and the two thieves.
2. The growth of grace in the heart of the good
thief.
7. And its reward.
XLIII. — MARY AND JOHN.
" Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His Mother,
and His Mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary
Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His Mother,
and the disciple standing whom He loved, He saith
to His Mother : Woman, behold thy son. After that
He saith to the disciple : Behold thy Mother. And
from that hour the disciple took her to his own." —
JOHN xix. 25-27.
I. Of all the scenes in the Passion, there is
none more familiar to every one of us than
this. The crowd has dwindled away; even its
noisy exultation has not been able to keep
up its false courage for long. There remain
n8 The Crown of Sorrow
a few, waiting to see the end; but these, no
doubt, are not those who have been most
violent; they are the partially sympathetic, the
more or less faithful remnant, the curious.
There remains, too, the guard, mainly of
Roman soldiers, divided between contempt for
the Victim and contempt for the people who
have made such a display of their Eastern
ferocity. It is true these soldiers have played
their part in the cruelty; but they are Western
souls, they are more easily sated in their lust
for blood, and they stand there sullen and
disgusted. Instinctively, without themselves
noticing it, the true mourners have crept
closer and closer; the guard does not trouble
to prevent them; they find some comfort for
themselves in this act of mercy. So three
women stand there — Mary Immaculate, Mary
the Penitent, Mary the mother of Apostles.
2. There is also at least one more — "the
disciple whom He loved." St. John, in thus
speaking of himself, does not mean that Our
Lord did not love others also; he does not
mean that he was himself loved more than
others; it is enough for him to know that in
matter of fact he is loved, and has been given
tokens of deep love, whatever else may have
been given to others. Peter also was a "dis
ciple whom He loved "; the last scene recorded
by St. John at the end of his Gospel is a great
proof of this; but the same might be said of
them all, of us all. It is not a little thing to
stand at the foot of the cross, and to know
that I can describe myself, in spite of all my
cowardice, my desertions, my denials, my
treacheries, as "the disciple standing whom
He loved."
Mary and John 119
3. Jesus saw them from the cross. Con
sider the simple fact. Fastened as He was,
the physical effort to look at anything must
have been an additional torture; one has seen
a semblance of it on a death-bed of torture.
In such agony as He was, the effort to think
of others was a wonder of charity; we forgive
much disregard from those who are in intense
suffering. But Jesus saw them; He saw that
motionless Mother; He knew that for her His
death must naturally mean her own; that her
love and her life were so linked with His that
when He died she too would fade and die.
But He would not have it so. He would yet
have her to live, for she had a work to do;
"that out of many hearts thoughts might be
revealed." She must be given another object
of her Mother's love, another child to cherish in
place of the one she was losing. There was
John ; there was all mankind ; let her take him
and them. "Woman, behold thy son." And
if so, then let John, let all men, do to her as
He Himself had done: "Man, behold thy
Mother."
Summary.
1. There stood by the cross of Jesus the soldiers and
the three Marys.
2. There stood also the disciple whom He loved.
3. He gave Mary to the disciple, and the disciple to
Mary.
i2o The Grown of Sorrow
XLIV.— THE FOURTH WORD.
" And when the sixth hour was come, there was
darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud
voice, saying : Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani ? Which
is, being interpreted : My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me? And some of them that stood there and
heard, said: Behold, this man calleth for Elias."—
MATT, xxvii. 45-47; MASK xv. 33-35; LUKE xxiii. 44.
1. " From the sixth to the ninth hour." The
darkness is clearly miraculous; the disciples
understood it as such. But it was such a
miracle as the enemy could easily assert to be
not proven. Such is the way of God. Miracles
are more usually for those who have the wish
to believe; for those who have the wish to
disbelieve it is always possible to find a way
out, even if it be the crude answer that we do
not understand all the facts. There is often
darkness at midday; that on this occasion it
should have fitted in with Our Lord's hanging
on the cross is a coincidence. But we under
stand ; Nature held her veil before her face in
very shame at what was being done. She
would not see; she would have others not see.
Our Lord had said that if the children who
praised Him were silenced, the very stones
would cry out; now all Nature cries out at the
crime that is committed. And all the time we
must not forget the three long, long hours of
Our Lord's last agony.
2. "My God, My God, why hast Thou for
saken Me?" The words open the Twenty-
first Psalm. But it would seem to be a mis
take to suppose that they are merely that and
no more. Rather they are an apt quotation
The Fourth Word 121
used to express Our Lord's real state of soul;
they are another fulfilment of prophecy. Our
Lord is drinking the cup to the dregs; He is
deliberately going through the "hour and the
power of darkness," and He wills that He
should be deprived of this last consolation.
From other passages it is clear that Our
Lord's mind, like Our Lady's, is full of the
Old Testament and its texts, which come
familiarly to the mind in time of prayer, even
as ejaculations come to the mind of one who
has made himself familiar with them. Hence
now, in the moment of His great desolation,
the desolation of the Psalmist, prophetic of
His own, provides Him with this form of
prayer. If Our Lord was tempted by the
Devil after His long fast in the desert, if then
the Devil only " left Him for a time," we need
not be surprised if now temptation of this
strange kind oppresses Him.
3. The Psalm which He cites is one of the
great prophetic psalms, and therefore deserves
to be considered here. Here are some of its
passages :
"But I — a worm and no man :
The reproach of men, and the outcast of the people.
All they that saw Me laughed Me to scorn ;
Curled their lips and wagged their head.
'He hopes in the Lord, let Him deliver Him;
Let Him save Him, seeing He delighteth in
Him!"'
And again :
" I am poured out like water ;
And all My bones are numbered.
My heart is become like wax within My breast.
My tongue is dried up as a potsherd,
Cleaving to My mouth :
And Thou hast reduced Me to the dust ot doath.
122 The Crown of Sorrow
For dogs have encompassed Me :
A council of the malignant hath besieged Me.
They have dug My hands and My feet.
They have numbered all my bones.
They have looked and gloated with their eyes upon
Me.
They parted My garments among them :
And upon My vesture they cast lots."
Summary.
1. The darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour.
2. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?"
3. Psalm Twenty-one.
XLV. — THE FIFTH AND SIXTH WORDS.
" Afterwards Jesus, knowing that all things were
accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
said : I thirst. Now there was a vessel set there full
of vinegar. And immediately one of them, running,
took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on
a reed about hyssop, and offered it to His mouth, ana
gave Him to drink. And others said : Stay, let us see
whether Elias will come to take Him down and deliver
Him. When Jesus therefore had taken the vinegar He
said : It is consummated." — MATT, xxvii. 48, 49; MARK
xv- 36; JOHN xix. 28-30.
I. His last word was a quotation from a
psalm; in this He refers to another, Psalm
Sixty-eight. This, like the Twenty-first, is
full of prophetic allusion, and Our Lord's
quotation of it seems to invite us to mingle
our thoughts with His at this moment. Let
us, then, take some passages. First the
prophet sees the deluge which overwhelms
Him:
" Save Me, O God; for there cometh
The water even unto My soul. . . .
I am come beneath the deeps of water,
And the flood overwhelms Me. .
The Fifth and Sixth Words 123
My eyes have grown dim from hoping
In God, My God.
More than are the hairs upon My head
Are those who hate Me without cause."
2. Then, later, He gives the reason of the
enmity, His very effort to do good.
" I am become a stranger to My brethren,
And an alien to the sons of My mother.
Because the zeal of Thy house hath eaten Me up,
And the reproaches of Thy reproachers have fallen
on Me.
I humbled My soul in fasting,
And it was made a reproach to Me.
I made haircloth My garment,
And I became a byword to them.
They that sat in the gate spoke against Me,
And the wine-bibbers made Me their song.
But as for Me, My prayer is to Thee :
Let mercy one day come."
3. Then comes the second part of this great
Psalm : the strong appeal :
" O God, in the multitude of Thy mercy hear Me,
Deliver Me from them that hate Me !
In the truth of Thy salvation draw Me from the
mire,
And out of the deep waters !
Let not the flood of water drown Me,
Nor the deep swallow Me up !
Let Me not sink, nor let close over Me
The mouth of the pit !
Hear Me, O Lord, for Thy mercy is kind
For I am in trouble.
Look upon Me in the greatness of Thy tender heart,
Make haste to hear Me.
Come near to My soul and deliver it,
Save Me because of My enemies."
And this is followed by the prophecy :
" Thou knowest My reproach,
My confusion and My shame are in Thy sight.
All they, My oppressors, deride Me,
My heart is oroken and in misery.
124 The Crown of Sorrow
I looked for compassion, but in vain {
For comfort, and I found none.
They gave Me gall for My food,
And in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink."
He would see this last prophecy fulfilled
before He died; now all is done; He has
finished the work God gave Him to do.
Summary.
1. Our Lord throws us back to the prophecy of
Psalm Sixty-eight : first the trouble.
2. Then its cause; He suffers because of His zeal for
His Father's house.
3. Then the effect upon Himself ; the treatment at th«
hands of His enemies.
XLVI. — THE DEATH OF OUR LORD.
" And Jesus again crying with a loud voice said :
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit. And
saying this, bowing down His head, He gave up the
ghost. And behold the sun was darkened, and the
veil of the Temple was rent in two in the midst from
the top even to the bottom, and the earth quaked, and
the rocks were rent. And the graves were opened, and
many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, and
coming out of the tombs after His resurrection, came
into the holy city and appeared to many." — MATT.
xxvii. 50-53; MARK xv. 37, 38; LUKE xxiii. 45, 46; JOHN
xix. 31.
i. Again, and for the last time, does our
dying Lord take His words from the Psalms.
The Psalms are His dying prayers. In this
last word, from the Thirtieth Psalm, He seems
to suggest to us our own thoughts and prayers
as we watch Him dying and after He is dead.
We may, then, well take it as such. First,
we may well imagine, is His own last prayer :
The Death of Our Lord 125
" In Thee. O Lord, have I hoped,
Let Me never be confounded.
In Thy justice deliver and free Me,
Bow down Thine ear to Me.
Be to Me a protecting rock,
A house of refuge to save Me.
For Thou art My strength and My refuge,
And for Thy Name's sake Thou wilt lead Me.
Thou dost nourish Me, and save Me from the snare,
Which they have hidden for Me.
Yea, O Lord, Thou art My protector,
Into Thy hands I commend My spirit."
2. "And saying this, bowing down His head,
He gave up the ghost." But we, as we do by
the bedside of one who dies before our eyes,
carry on our prayer with the same Psalm, one
of mingled joy and sorrow. For it goes on :
" But I have hoped in the Lord,
I will be glad and rejoice in Thy mercy.
For Thou hast regarded My lowliness,
Thou hast saved My soul out of distress.
Thou hast not enclosed Me in the hands of the enemy,
Thou hast set My feet in a spacious place.
• « * * *
I have trusted in Thee, O Lord,
I said : ' Thou art My God.
My lots are in Thy hand ; deliver Me
From the hands of My foes, My persecutors.'
Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant ;
Save Me in Thy mercy.
Let Me not be confounded, O Lord, for I have called
on Thee."
3. The Psalm concludes with that refrain of
trust which every holy death-bed inspires, but
which must most of all be inspired by this
holiest death-bed of all.
" How great is Thy sweetness, O Lord,
Which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee ;
Which Thou hast wrought for them that hope io Thee,
In the sight of the sons of men
126 The Crown of Sorrow
Thou dost shield them with the shield of Thy coun
tenance
From the disturbance of men.
Thou dost protect them in Thy tabernacle
From the contradiction of tongues.
Blessed be the Lord, Who hath shown His great
mercy to Me
In a fortified city.
I said in the depression of My mind :
' I am cast away before Thine eyes.'
Then Thou hast heard the voice of My prayer
When I cried to Thee.
0 love the Lord, all ye His saints,
Who keep the truth of the Lord.
* * * * *
Do ye manfully, and let your heart be strengthened,
All ye that hope in the Lord."
Summary.
1. Our Lord's last prayer : trust in God.
2. Our prayer beside His body : trust in God.
3. With thanksgiving.
XLVII. — THE CENTURION'S CONFESSION.
" Now the centurion, who stood over against Him,
and they that were with him watching Jesus, seeing
that crying out in this manner He had given up the
ghost, having seen the earthquake and the things that
were done, were greatly afraid, and glorified God, say
ing : Indeed this was a just man. Indeed this was
the Son of God. Indeed this man was the Son of
God." — MATT, xxvii. 54; MARK xv. 39; LUKE xxiii. 47.
I. Here, when all is over, we have, as it
were, the verdict of an irresponsible jury. It
is not necessary to suppose that they under
stood the full significance of the title, but the
words had been ringing" in their ears since
the beginning of the tragedy, and their con-
elusion was that, whatever they might imply,
The Centurion's Confession 127
He had vindicated His cause against His
murderers. The evidence may not have been
convincing to a cold materialist; it was
apparently no more than that He had died
with a loud cry on His lips, that the earth had
quaked, that the sky had darkened, and that
other strange things had happened. But be
hind all these were other details, far more
convincing in themselves, yet useless to the
mind of the materialist : the revolting passion
of the victors contrasted with the calm dignity
of the Victim; the infuriated mob that sup
ported the murderers contrasted with the
quiet sorrow of Our Lord's followers; the
self-dissatisfaction of the first in their hour of
triumph, and the confident "Into Thy hands
I commend My spirit" of the second, at His
moment of utterest defeat. By these marks
is He known; by these marks is the persecuted
truth known in all ages.
2. So we have the proof anticipated in the
Old Testament; the real sign of the Son of
God was this. Thus the Psalmist, speaking
prophetically, says : " I am a worm and no
man : the reproach of men, and the outcast
of the people. All they that saw Me have
laughed Me to scorn : they have spoken with
the lips, and wagged the head. He hoped in
the Lord, let Him deliver Him : let Him save
Him, seeing He delighteth in Him." And
Isaias : " There is no beauty in Him, nor come
liness : and we have seen Him, and there was
no sightliness, that we should be desirous of
Him. Despised, and the most abject of men,
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with in
firmity." And Jeremias : " I was as a meek
lamb that is carried to be a victim : and I
128 The Crown of Sorrow
knew not that they had devised counsels
against Me, saying : Let us put wood on His
bread, and cut Him off from the land of the
living, and let His name be remembered no
more." If the Jews had remembered this side
of prophecy, "they would not have crucified
the Lord of Glory."
3. But there is the more significant prophecy
still, which may well occupy our thoughts at
the foot of the cross. The wicked in the
Book of Wisdom say : " He boasteth that He
hath the knowledge of God, and calleth Him
self the Son of God. He is become a censurer
of our thoughts. He is grievous unto us,
even to behold : for His Hie is not like other
men's, and His ways are very different. We
are esteemed by Him as triflers, and He
abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness,
and He preferreth the latter end of the just,
and glorieth that He hath God for His Father.
Let us see, then, if His words be true, and let
us prove what will happen to Him, and we
shall know what His end shall be. For if
He be the true Son of God, He will defend
Him, and will deliver Him from the hand of
His enemies. Let us examine Him by out
rages and tortures, that we may know His
meekness and try His patience. Let us con
demn Him to a most shameful death; for
there shall be respect had unto Him by His
words."
Summary.
i. The centurion's evidence of the Son of God.
2 and 3. The evidence of prophecy.
The Mourners 129
XLVIII.— THE MOURNERS.
" And all the multitude of them that were come
together to that sight, and saw the things that were
done, returned striking their breasts. And there were
also women, among whom was Mary Magdalene, and
Mary the Mother of James the less, and of Joseph, and
Salome, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who also
when He was in Galilee followed Him, and ministered
to Him, and many other women that came up with
Him to Jerusalem. And all his acquaintance and the
women stood afar off beholding these things." — MATT.
xxvii. 55, 56; MARK xv. 40, 41 ; LUKE xxiii. 48, 49.
i. "All the multitude of them that were
come together to that sight." So this was a
"sight," a show, a spectacle, this murder of
the Son of God! And a great "multitude"
had come to witness it! Of whom was that
multitude composed ? We have heard the
crowd crying out its ridicule and blasphemies
as He lay bleeding to death; are these the
same people that now go back, " striking their
breasts"? It is .scarcely credible, though
perhaps some were in the number; just as,
with all great sin, the sense of remorse at the
moment of achievement overtakes the sense
of satisfaction in the sin, and turns the cup
of pleasure into bitterness. This bitterness
some take for contrition, but it is not that;
it is the physical and moral reaction, and is
the natural basis upon which true contrition
may be built. Possibly in the case of these
poor Jews the sense of remorse endured, the
fruits of which were to be reaped by St. Peter
after Pentecost.
2. But the words seem to imply that besides
the murderers and their mob following was
9
130 The Crown of Sorrow
another " multitude " standing outside, of
merely curious spectators; and on these in His
last moments Our Lord had pity. They had
been passive all the time, but their very silent
acquiescence had told against Him. They
again confirm the truth, witnessed to by the
history of the world, that the "multitude" is
usually little guilty of the great crimes against
God that are committed ; it is the leaders who
provoke the crime that "have the greater
sin." Hence we often hear in Scripture that
Our Lord "had pity on the multitude"; that
He was "filled with compassion" for it; that
He drew it after Him; and here He gives it
sorrow for its share in the evil that has been
done.
3. And somewhere in this crowd, unmo
lested by anyone, probably pitied, perhaps by
their presence and behaviour stirring in those
around sorrow and sympathy for Our Lord,
is the group of faithful women, so pointedly
mentioned by the Evangelists, who had
followed Him in Galilee, and had ministered
to His wants, and had thus, under His direc
tion, laid the foundation of the work of women
in the Church, trained in some sense by Our
Lord Himself, even as had been the Apostles.
These now had been rewarded for their faith
ful service by being given their special place
on Calvary ; and for all time will be honoured
and imitated by other faithful women-servants
of Our Lord, who in their turn will be re
warded by a share in the Crucifixion — women
in the world, women in religion, saints marked
with the insignia of the Passion — a Gertrude,
a Catherine, a Theresa. They did nothing;
they only stood and looked on; but their
The Pierced Side 131
presence must have been no small joy to Our
Lord in His last hour.
Summary.
1. The remorse of the first group.
2. The contrition of the second group.
3. The sorrow and sympathy of the third group.
XLIX— THE PIERCED SIDE.
" Then the Jews (because it was the Parasceve), that
the bodies might not remain upon the cross on the Sab
bath-day (for that was a great Sabbath-day), besought
Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they
might be taken away. The soldiers therefore came,
and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other
that was crucified with Him. But when they came
to Jesus, and saw that He was already dead, they did
not break His legs, but one of the soldiers opened his
side with a spear, and immediately there came out
blood and water. And he that saw gave testimony,
and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he
saith true, that you also may believe. For these things
were done that the Scripture might be fulfilled : You
shall not break a bone of Him. And again another
Scripture saith : They shah look on Him Whom they
pierced." — JOHN xix. 31-37.
i. Jesus is dead, but His two companions are
not yet, and the great Sabbath-day is drawing
near. St. John, with his eye kept steadily fixed
on the great unity of the work of God among
men, that unity which he was able the better
to recognize after the vision of the Apocalypse,
that unity which we shall understand in the
great revelation of the next world, reminds
us of two great though insignificant details,
which might well be the key to many more.
"They did not break His legs;" they broke no
bone of the " Lamb that was slain from the
132 The Grown of Sorrow
beginning of the world." Thus was obeyed
the precept concerning the Paschal Lamb :
"You shall not break a bone of Him." The
membership of the Body of Christ must be
a complete thing; to the end of time a " severed
limb " shall be a contradiction.
2. Thus for the fulfilment of the past. But
the last of the prophets had spoken another
word looking into the future. In one of the
most difficult passages of the Old Testament
the prophet Zachary had strangely inter
mingled words of triumph and of sorrow.
The day would come when "Jerusalem"
would revive, when "the Lord" would "pro
tect the inhabitants of Jerusalem" even from
herself; and the prophet goes on: "And I
will pour out upon the house of David, and
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit
of grace and of prayers : and they shall look
upon Me, Whom they have pierced : and they
shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for an
only son, and they shall grieve over Him, as
the manner is to grieve for the death of the
first-born." St. John saw the heart of Jesus
Christ pierced through; he remembers the
word of Zachary; he knows that the piercing
of that heart means many things for Christ's
own that are to be.
3. Here St. John reverts to that form of
emphasis which we find in two or three other
places of his writings. We find it at the
beginning of his Epistles ; we find it at the end
of the Apocalypse ; we find it at the conclusion
of his Gospel, where he says: "These are
written that you may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God : and that believing
you may have life in His name." And here
The Gift of the Body 133
he says : " He knoweth that he saith true, that
you also may believe." What would he have
us believe from this passage ? That Jesus
Christ is indeed the fulfilment of all prophecy ;
that He is the great Sacrifice, concluding in
Himself all that has gone before ; that He has
poured Himself out, to the last drop of blood
and water; that henceforth, for all time and
for all eternity, the stream springing from
Calvary shall flow on, preserving innocence in
many, cleansing many more, so that the glory
of Heaven itself shall consist in being steeped
in the Blood of the Lamb.
Summary.
1. No bone was broken.
2. The side was opened.
3. The great meaning of this for all time.
L. — THE GIFT OF THE BODY.
" And when evening was come (because it was the
Parasceve, that is, the day before the Sabbath) a certain
rich man of Arimathea, a city of Judaea, by name
Joseph, who was a senator, a noble councillor, a good
and just man, who also himself waited for the Kingdom
of God, and was a disciple of Jesus, but in private,
for fear of the Jews ; this man had not consented to
their counsel and doings ; went in boldly to Pilate and
besought that he might take away the body of Jesus.
But Pilate wondered that He should be already dead.
And when he had understood it by the centurion, he
commanded that the body of Jesus should be delivered
to Joseph. He came therefore and took away the body
of Jesus." — MATT, xxvii. 57-59; MARK xv. 42-45; LUKE
xxiii. 50-52 ; JOHN xix. 38.
I. The body of Jesus Christ must be dis
posed of, the body which has saved the world !
9*
134 The Grown of Sorrow
Unless something is done for it by men,
it will be thrown away into the common
criminals' pit, as so many bodies of His
martyrs have been thrown away. But for us
it matters little; His body must not be treated
so. The occasion makes the hero. Joseph of
Arimathea has hitherto been no man of action.
He has lived his honoured life alone, a life
that has for the most part been spent in
smooth waters, respected by friend and
enemy, moderate, prudent, committing him
self in little or nothing. But now the time for
the one deed of his life has come, and he is
equal to it. For how many — perhaps for the
majority of people — is life a preparation for,
does life centre itself in, a single heroic deed !
2. In this precisely does Joseph of Arimathea
contrast with Pilate. He, too, had his single
chance, his one critical moment in life, and he
failed. And now that all is over "Pilate
wondered that He should be already dead."
We may with reason wonder that he won
dered. He knew all Our Lord had endured.
He knew that no ordinary man could have
gone through it all and lived. His enemies
had feared that His life would ebb out on
the road to Calvary, before He had been nailed
to the cross. But with Pilate the wish was
father to the thought. From the beginning
he had hoped that he himself would be "inno
cent of the blood of this just man." He had
tried to throw the responsibility on others ; he
had himself turned and writhed many ways;
and he had hoped that this "King of the
Jews " might at the very last yet " come down
from the cross " and save His reputation and
Pilate's. But now he hears the doom; the
The Gift of the Body 135
heart of the dead Jesus Christ has been pierced
through; there is no hope; whatever men may
say, whatever he himself may affect, he is the
murderer of "this just man."
3. One's heart aches for Pilate, as it must
ache for any soul that awakes to grievous sin,
and hears the voice ringing in its ears : " What
hast thou done ?" He cannot restore that life.
He cannot ever again restore his own life.
But there is sorrow mingled with the remorse
in the concession that is made to Joseph.
Poor Jesus Christ ! Though the Council has
condemned Him and done Him to death, at
least the most honourable member of the
Council shall bury Him. Though He is so
poor Himself that the soldiers shall have His
clothes, and His very body shall be a thing to
be given away, yet it shall be buried with the
honour that is its due. What a host of
mystical thoughts are contained in this gift
of Our Lord's body by man to man I
Summary.
i. The one opportunity in his life for Joseph of
Arimathea is accepted, as with Simon of Gyrene.
a. The contrast between him and Pilate.
3. The body of Our Lord is given by man tc man.
136 The Grown of Sorrow
LI. — THE BURIAL.
" And Nicodemus also came, who at first came to
Jesus by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes,
about a hundred pound. They took therefore the body
of Jesus, and buying fine linen, wrapped it up in the
linen cloths with the spices, as it is the custom with
the Jews to bury. And there was in the place where
He was crucified a garden, and in the garden a new
sepulchre, his own (Joseph's) monument, which he
had hewed out in a rock, wherein never yet any man
had been laid. There therefore, by reason of the
Parasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, because the
sepulchre was nigh at hand. And he rolled a great
stone to the door of the monument, and went his way.
And Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Joseph,
and the women that were come with Him from Galilee,
following after, sitting over against the sepulchre,
beheld where His body was laid. And returning they
prepared spices and ointments, and on the Sabbath-
day they rested, according to the commandment." —
MATT, xxvii. 59-61 ; MARK xv. 46, 47 ; LUKE xxiii. 53-56;
xix. 39-42.
i. There is something striking, one might
say pathetic, in watching the chief mourners
in Our Lord's funeral procession. We have
not Peter, the first and the leader of His own,
but Joseph of Arimathea, who, in status at
least, belonged to the camp of His enemies.
We have not any of those who had been seen
with Him always, but Nicodemus, who feared
ever to be seen with Him at all. The others
provided nothing for the funeral; even John
was occupied with other things; these pro
vided of their best, in the sepulchre, the burial
clothes, their reverent labour. There cannot
but be deep significance in this ; may one not
cnll it the consecration of the layman's work
The Burial 137
in the Church ? The provision, that is, of the
material things and the material labour that
are needful for the due honour that belongs
to the Body of Christ, corporal and mystical.
2. The sepulchre, again, is a matter for
thought. Half an hour before who would
have imagined that "this malefactor" could
have received so honourable a place of burial ?
Yet He is given, not merely a place of honour,
but the very best that Jewry could provide;
for it is a tomb specially prepared, in a special
place, and in a special way, by a noble member
of the Council for himself. And He is buried,
not merely with due Jewish rites, but in the
richest way that a rich and noble Jew could
arrange. Instinctively one's thoughts go
towards the Blessed Sacrament. No matter
what insult is offered to it, the Body of Christ
is now and always the object of the most
lavish gifts of man. Things perishable and
things imperishable, myrrh and aloes, or the
tomb, alike are bestowed upon it to over
flowing; and no one who understands will
dream of calling it waste.
3. We look again when all is over. Joseph
and Nicodemus have done their work and
gone; John has led "to his own" the heart
broken Mother; but others remain, "sitting
over against the sepulchre," and looking at
the spot "where His body was laid." Again
we have little difficulty in recognizing who
they represent. There are those whose chief
devotion in life is to sit "over against the
sepulchre" and to "behold where His body
is laid": hungry souls, whose craving for
prayer, and for union with the Lord Whom
they have once known, never leaves them, yet
138 The Crown of Sorrow
who seem to be left very much alone, per
mitted only to look at the "place where He
is laid," and then to go forward and do for
Him whatever their love shall suggest, it
matters little what. Such souls often have the
added agony of not knowing the joy of this
abiding.
Summary.
1. The honour of the funeral of Our Lord; the lay
man's place in the Church.
2. The honour of the sepulchre and of the tabernacle.
3. The watchers at the sepulchre represented in all
time.
LIT. — THE GUARDS.
" And the next day which followed the day of the
preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees came
together to Pilate, saying : Sir, we have remembered
that that seducer said, while He was yet alive : After
three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, the
sepulchre to be guarded until the third day, lest His
disciples come, and steal Him away, and say to the
people : He is risen from the dead, so the last error
shall be worse than the first. Pilate said to them : You
have a guard ; go, guard it as you know. And they,
departing, made the sepulchre sure with guards, seal
ing the stone." — MATT, xxvii. 62-66.
I. St. Augustine has a famous withering
passage of the significance of this last act
of "the chief priests and Pharisees." But
perhaps he does not dwell as much as might
be done on th~e terrible self-awakening con
fession that these words imply. They had
accepted as evidence against Him His words
that He would destroy the Temple. Though
the witnesses had not agreed before Annas,
yet they had raked the accusation up again
when they flung their charges at Pilate. And
The Guards 139
now, in the most flagrant way, they acknow
ledge that from the beginning they had under
stood perfectly what He had meant. Appar
ently, even the Apostles had not ; for St. John
tells us they clearly understood only after
the Resurrection. But the chief priests and
Pharisees were trained in such language; its
interpretation was the study of their lives;
and Our Lord spoke to them " in their own
tongue" when He made that prophecy. No
wonder, then, that all this time it had rankled
most in their minds; no wonder, when He was
yet alive, it was the source of their chief attack
among themselves; and no wonder, now that
He was dead, they were compelled to take
notice of it.
2. But the folly of contending with Our
Lord Jesus Christ! Above all, the folly of
setting up our own judgment against the
judgment of Our Lord, or of forcing His
words to our own sense ! These men under
stood, but they did not believe ; or rather it
should be said they would not let themselves
believe. As on one occasion they had said :
"This is a hard saying, and who shall hear
it?" confessing that they understood and yet
would not believe; as on another occasion
they had said: "We have Abraham and the
prophets," confessing that they understood
and yet wrould not believe ; as many other times
they had made the same confession, and yet
had chosen to refuse; so now, the habit had
been formed, and they found it easy to accept
the understanding of the words, yet refused
to believe them, and therefore to believe in
Him who uttered them.
3. But "God is not mocked." God is not
140 The Grown of Sorrow
called an "impostor," a "seducer," witK im
punity. He rules from end to end mightily;
He puts down the mighty from their seat and
exalts the lowly; and no one escapes from His
rule. Men induce themselves to believe in
themselves, where they cannot do so with any
show of reason; there must follow the down
fall at one time or another, for "the truth is
great and will prevail." Something of this
must have made that Sabbath-day an anxious
one for the chief priests and Pharisees; and
the same must have filled the mourners with
firm hope, which must have increased with
every moment. The sun goes down over the
burial of our Lord with beauty and glory; and
the Church has been unable to resist the
anticipation of the coming triumph, as she
sings her Alleluia the day before.
Summary.
1. The self-conviction of the chief priests and
Pharisees.
2. The self-delusion of their refusal to believe.
3. The inevitable issue.
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
BT 430 .G597 1918 SMC
Goodier, Alban,
1869-1939.
The crown of sorrow :
quadragesima :
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